Mark 4:1-20 – The Seed, the Sower, and the Soil

I. Vss. 1-9; The Parable of the Soils:

Parable – from 2 Greek words that mean “to cast alongside” (Para—alongside; ballo—to throw or cast)

II. Vss. 10-12:  The Purpose of Parables.

mustērion (moos-tay’-ree-on)- generally mysteries, religious secrets, confided only to the initiated and not to ordinary mortals.

G. Campbell Morgan: “Jesus used the parabolic method, not in order to blind them, but in order to make them look again; not in order to prevent them from coming to forgiveness, but in order to lure them toward a new attention.”

III. Vss. 13-20: Parable of the sower explained:
Adam Clark: “It is a high offence against God to change the Master’s seed, to mix it, or to sow bad seed in the place of it.”

Wayside— This is the “Hard Heart”

Proverbs 4:23: Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. 

Hosea 10:12:  Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground. For it is time to seek Jehovah, until He comes and rains righteousness on you. 

Stony Ground— This is the “Shallow Heart”
Thorny Soil—This is the “Crowded Heart”

James 4:4: Do you not know that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever desires to be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

1 John 2:15-16: Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him, because all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.\

Good Ground— This is the “Fruitful Heart”

2 Corinthians 5:17:  So that if any one is in Christ, that one is a new creature; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

Each of the fruitless hearts is influenced by a different enemy: the hard heart—the devil himself snatches the seed; the shallow heart—the flesh counterfeits religious feelings; the

Crowded heart— the things of the world smother the growth and prevent a harvest.

These are the three great enemies of the Christian: the world, the flesh, and the devil