Sermon Tone Analysis

My dad’s passion as a young man was for farming.

He loved farming.

When he was 19 yrs.

old he went in with his parents to purchase a 120 acre farm in Lapeer, Michigan.

By day my dad was a farmer, but by night he was a factory worker for General Motors.

He once told me that he took the job in the factory so that he could have the money to farm.

When I was a young lad my dad had to give up most of his farming venture.

He developed an allergy to ragweed — hay fever is what we always called it.

And this was always the worst during the time of the grain harvesting.

Without being able to perform the work himself it was not profitable to continue as a grain farmer.

But once thing my dad never gave up was his garden.

His ragweed allergy still bothered him, but he figured that his young boys could handle things in the garden during the time when his hay-fever was the worst.

Dad put a lot of planning into his gardening.

We raised up to 3 acres of vegetables each year.

He was a big believer in rotating the crops and letting certain section of the garden lay fallow for a year.

In the fall, after the harvesting was completed he would plow under the garden.

Then in the winter months he would order his seed for the coming harvest.

For some of the plants, tomatoes especially, he would plant them in our basement with a heat lamp over them for part of the day.

This would give us a head start on them.

In the spring, if my memory serves me right, we would begin by spreading manure on the garden — using a manure spreader along with our friend chicken manure — to fertilize the garden.

That was definitely NOT a highlight of my spring!

Then he would plow the land that he intended to plant for the year.

After plowing he would disc the garden, and then drag it.

(Please don’t ask me to tell you the theory behind the various steps).

He had a piece of equipment that was called a harrow but I have long since forgotten the distinction between the various operations.

Finally it was time to plant.

Most of the vegetables were planted by hand, but the two acres of sweet corn was planted with a corn spreader.

Up to this point each year, with the exception of the spreading of manure, my dad did almost all of the work.

My brother and I were charged with keeping the garden weeded, and with helping with the harvest.

And the harvest was always plentiful.

And according to my brother and I, the laborers were always way too few!

My dad was pretty meticulous about preparing the soil to receive the planted seed.

If you have not already done so, please turn in your Bible to .

Our passage this morning is the private explanation Jesus gave to His apostles regarding the meaning of the parable of the sower.

As we go through our passage we are going to briefly look at the methods of farming in the first century, the sower, the seed, and then we will spend the bulk of our time looking at the soil.

In order to refresh our memories let’s read the parable first, ; and then the explanation found in .

FIRST CENTURY FARMING

R.C. Sproul, in his commentary on this passage points out that the method of planting seeds in first century Israel was quite different than it is in modern times.

Like my dad, modern farmers prepare their soil ahead of time.

But in first century Israel they “sowed their seeds first, the plowed the seeds into the earth.”

(R.C.

Sproul; MATTHEW; 2013; Crossway; Wheaton, IL; pg.

415.)

THE SOWER

Let’s talk about the identity of the sower.

Most commentators seem to believe that the sower of the seed represents Jesus.

In the explanation of the parable of the tares among the wheat Jesus does identify Himself as the sower in that parable.

Of course that is a different parable, and we should not mix the two of them together.

In order to truly identify who the sower is, we must first identify what the seed is that is being sown.

THE SEED

Unlike the sower, Jesus does identify what the seed is.

Look at .

The seed is identified as the word of the kingdom.

The Greek term logos which is translated word, could also be translated as message.

The message of the gospel is what is being referred to hear.

So the Word of God (especially the Gospel)is the seed that is being sown.

It would do us well to remind ourselves of what the gospel message is.

The Word of God (especially the Gospel)

Ruler/Creator

Rebel

Redeemer

Receiver

Therefore, the sower is anyone who shares the message of the gospel.

This includes Jesus, obviously, but it is not limited to Him.

All of the apostles were sowers of the seed.

And you and I should be sowers of seed as well!

THE SOIL

Let’s turn our attention now to the soil.

Jesus identified the soil as being The People Who Receive the Gospel Message.

Included in His explanation for four distinct types of soil, which represent four different ways in which the gospel is received.

It is very important for us to understand that only one of these types of reception of the message brings about true conversion to Christ.

The Roadside Soil — a Heart That is Impervious to Biblical Truth

Notice that the goal of sowing the seed or sharing the message of the gospel is that people might be saved.

Notice also that salvation is the result of believing the message of the gospel.

When we share the gospel we will often run into people whose hearts are as hard as stone.

The O.T. refers to such people as being “stiff-necked.”

God, speaking to Moses in the context of the golden calf incident in said this:

Speaking to Jeremiah God said:

In the N.T. Stephen, as he was about to martyred on behalf of Christ, said this to his persecutors (which included the man who come to be known as Paul):

John MacArthur, in his book titled Parables (2015; Nelson Books; Nashville, TN; pg.

29-30) wrote:

“What’s interesting here is that Jesus is not describing atheists.

He is speaking to people in a highly religious culture, and the hardest of all hearts in His audience this day are the religious aristocracy — the top scribes and Pharisees, the same ones who had so recently blasphemed the Holy Spirit, cutting themselves off from grace altogether.”

Rocky Soil — Shallow Hearer

The next type of soil/reception that Jesus referred to was in regards to seed that fell on rocky soil, which represents a shallow reception of the gospel message.

As I mentioned earlier, we had a three acre garden.

We lived on a 10 acre plot of land that had been farmed for many years before my parents purchased it in 1971, and then built a house on it.

On that plot there were three huge rock piles that a previous farmer had collected in order to better farm this land.

The section of our garden in which we grew a variety of vegetables, with the exception of sweet corn, was located in between two of these piles.

Every day before heading to work at Pontiac Motors, our dad would leave a note for my brother and I as to which portion of the garden he wanted us to weed.

We had to finish that work before we could have free time to do whatever it was that we wanted to do.

My brother would finish his portion of work in a half hour or less.

But it took me several hours to finish my section.

This was not because I was assigned more work, but because I was easily distracted (I probably still am!).

One of my favorite distraction was to add rocks to these piles — well actually they were probably more along the line of stones.

The reason why it took me so long was that I would pretend that the stones were baseballs, and that I was a pitcher.

And of course the rock piles were the catcher.

Since the rock piles provided such a large strike zone, I constantly struck out 27 batters every day!

Then there were the times in which I tried to use the hoe for a bat and hit the rocks — I wasn’t nearly as successful in this endeavor.

But what is being referred to in this passage is a field of dirt that is layered over a shelf of lye stone, or some other such thing.

The dirt was deep enough to evade the detection of the farmer.