Sunday LINK – THE SON SOWN FOR THE WHOLE WORLD | SL20260712

The Father Has Sown His Son for the Whole World   

Matthew 13:1–9, 18–23 NRSVUE   

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. ² Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. ³ And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. ⁴ And as he sowed, some seeds fell on a path, and the birds came and ate them up. ⁵ Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. ⁶ But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away. ⁷ Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. ⁸ Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. ⁹ If you have ears, hear!”

¹⁸ “Hear, then, the parable of the sower. ¹⁹ When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. ²⁰ As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, ²¹ yet such a person has no root but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. ²² As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of this age and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. ²³ But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”  Matthew 13:1–9, 18–23 (NRSVUE)  

We just heard what’s called the Parable of the Sower.  But chances are you may not be familiar with the word “sow” or “sower.”  They are not common words today unless you grew up in the Christian church or you’re a farmer.  

Sow simply means to plant seeds by scattering them on or in the ground.  And the sower is the person doing the planting, the scattering.  

Fewer and fewer people in industrialized countries farm. Some people garden on a small scale. If you live in the city, you might grow plants in a container on your balcony. Even fewer still raise their plants from seed. We buy our vegetables and flowers as potted plants that a commercial nursery has grown.

Many of us never see the seed, but the entire life of the plant is contained in the seed. Seeds are small. So small, you may lose sight of it once it’s dropped into the soil. Even a large, white seed, like a bean — once it’s covered with dirt, you no longer see it.

And if you dug up the mature plant up, you would only find roots, no sign of the seed. The seed dies to give life to the plant.   

And Jesus says, the kingdom of God is like this.  

Today we will hear the good news that the Father has sown his Son for the whole world.   

Let’s go back to the beginning of the passage.

¹ That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. ² Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. ³ And he told them many things in parables … (verses 1–3a)

Jesus spoke to the crowd. Jesus’ messages were often meant for groups of people heard in community. This is a good reminder for us to ask: what does this message mean for our community of believers, not just for my personal life?

And Jesus told the crowd many things in parables. What is a parable? A parable is a type of teaching or storytelling that places two things side-by-side so that one sheds light on the other.

So, what gets placed side-by-side in Jesus’ parables? It’s typically an everyday image placed beside a kingdom reality. Jesus takes something you already understand and places it next to something you do not understand fully, so you can begin to see God’s kingdom in a whole new way.

Parables were a common Jewish teaching method in the first century and earlier. Jesus was not the only person to use parables. But Jesus tended to take this teaching device and turn it into something that created mystery more than providing straightforward explanation.

So, if we’re expecting Jesus’ parables to be straightforward, we’ll be disappointed. His parables are mysterious because God’s kingdom is mysterious. That is not the same as being unknowable, though.

We understand God’s kingdom as God’s gracious rule, already present in Christ. It’s the reality of God renewing the world according to his love and purposes. Because the kingdom is often hidden and still unfolding, we ask for the Spirit to reveal the kingdom to us in new ways.

Our scripture passage says, the kingdom is like a sower who went out to sow. But this is not a tidy object lesson. As we’ve said, Jesus’ parables are more than mere illustrations.

Instead, Jesus sets the idea of his kingdom beside (side-by-side) something surprising and lets the tension do the work. It’s true that Jesus often took time after speaking to the crowds to give more meaning to his close followers, but the tension remained.

And we do not really like unresolved tension, do we?

The tension in the comparison disrupts. The comparison flips assumptions, challenges thinking, and surprises the listener. Because of this “side-by-side” tension parables often contain unexpected elements and create surprise.

So, parables can be difficult to interpret. But please do not avoid reading and studying Jesus’ parables because they aren’t perfectly clear — even scholars disagree about their meanings. Parables are rich and fascinating, and it’s good to wrestle with them.

Trust God in the tension. Stay with the tension. Return to them over and over again, asking the Spirit to give you the things of Christ.

We should not confuse them with neat, little stories with a lesson, like a children’s book or Aesop’s Fables. Even if you’ve never heard the name Aesop’s Fables, you may be familiar with one of the stories in the collection, called “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” It is likely some of you can even recite the moral of that story: liars are not believed even when they tell the truth.

But Jesus’ parables cannot be reduced to something simple like, “Here’s a picture, and here’s the lesson.” Instead, we keep asking a deeper question: What does placing these things side‑by‑side reveal about God and his kingdom?

That’s because the comparison almost always reveals something surprising about God’s action — about what God is doing in the world. The parable keeps God central. Jesus’ parables are not merely instructions for human behavior or tidy moral lessons.

So, when we read the Parable of the Sower, if our main focus becomes the soils, we’ve probably shifted the spotlight onto ourselves instead of God. When the takeaway becomes, “Here’s the lesson: be good soil,” we’ve collapsed the parable into moralism — into a principle — rather than allowing it to reveal the character and work of God.

So, let’s return to the parable and see what we can learn about our generous God the Father who has sown his Son for the whole world.

¹⁸ “Hear, then, the parable of the sower. ¹⁹ When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. ²⁰ As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, ²¹ yet such a person has no root but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. ²² As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of this age and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. ²³ But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.” Matthew 13:18–23 NRSVUE

Is Jesus telling us what kind of soil to be or to avoid?

We could read this as a warning or a threat. “Don’t be rocky. Don’t be choked out by the lure of wealth.” When we look at Jesus’ teachings as a whole, we see that he is far more often describing reality — “This is how things are” — than prescribing action or issuing instructions — “Do this.”

Rather than prescribing behaviors we should do or avoid, Jesus seems to be describing what already exists: The kingdom is here; Jesus is among us. The way that people respond to the good news of Jesus is mixed. He’s naming a pattern.

The parable includes the various kinds of ground or soil, but it’s not the primary force. The point is less “what kind of soil are you?” More “what kind of God is this?”

What is God doing here? Always begin here. What does this parable show about God’s character? What is God doing that is surprising?

Let’s start with the question: who is the sower? It’s often identified as Jesus. Yes — and that’s true. But there’s more here.

Jesus the Sower — and Jesus the Seed

In John 1, we read:

¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴ in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it. John 1:1–5 NRSVUE

We learn that the Word is the eternal Christ, the second Person of the undivided Trinity. He was sent by the Father to save us. In other words, Jesus has been sown into our world; he is among us. The kingdom is here because the King is here. Jesus is God’s Word, and he embodies the kingdom — he is the Word (capital/upper case “W”) of the kingdom.

So, we can also say this: the Father is the Sower, and the Son is the Seed. The Father has sown his Son for the whole world.

As the Seed, Jesus falls into the ground and dies — and in that dying he bears fruit for the whole world. Jesus speaking about his death, said,

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” John 12:24 NRSVUE

Jesus has entered even hard, rocky, thorn-filled ground — and brought life where none could grow. He enters our dead and barren soil (remember, we were dead in our sins). He bears the thorns (literally, a crown of thorns). He is scorched and withers under suffering and death on the cross. He becomes the Seed that dies and rises.

Christ has already borne our fruitlessness. He took on our bent, fruitless humanity and healed it. And now, by the Spirit, he bears fruit in us. This is why we can say the kingdom is fully — albeit mysteriously — present in the Word. Jesus did for us what we could not do for ourselves.

The Father’s extravagant generosity

In this parable, what shocks us is the Sower and the lavishness of the seed-scattering. The seed is thrown everywhere — on every kind of soil. From the perspective of a wise farmer, it looks like waste and is illogical. It’s unusual, even reckless. But that “wastefulness” is the point: it reveals the extravagant generosity of the triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Even in the face of resistance and hostility, God sows generously. The kingdom is sown lavishly and persistently, even where it seems unlikely to succeed.

But what does verse 23 say?

But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.

Here’s another surprising element. These numbers do not make sense. A yield of 30, 60, 100-fold is shockingly high. Even though some seed fell on hard paths, rocks, and thorns, the harvest is absurdly abundant.

The kingdom is all-encompassing, and it’s unstoppable. The gates of hell cannot prevail against it. Despite what looks like failure, the reality of the kingdom breaks into unreality.

By the Father, Jesus has been sown everywhere in the world. And he did this without any bit of cooperation or effort or permission from us. Before we ever asked for him or responded to him, God, the Holy Trinity, acted first.

Does our response matter?

The work of the Word of the kingdom takes place in mystery, in secret, largely unseen. Like a seed buried in the soil, it remains hidden. And because we cannot always observe or fully understand this mystery, we receive it through faith. Our response is to trust.

The Word is already fruitful — that’s not in question. Our response does not activate the Word of the kingdom’s presence in the world. The call to respond is for our benefit.

The greatest difference our response to the Word makes is the impact it has on us.

Our response does not determine whether the Word will accomplish his purpose. But our response affects whether we will experience and enjoy what has already been accomplished, what is already true.

When a plant does not bear fruit, it is not a punishment. A fruitless plant misses out on its fullness, its intended life. When we bear fruit, by the Spirit, we become the people God intends for us to be. God transforms us into our true selves, who he meant us to be.

Mission

As God is transforming us into who we were created to be, we become sent people. And his parable helps us think about how we live as sent people.

Because the Father has sown his Son for the whole world, we are not “bringing Jesus” to our neighbors. Jesus is already there. What we bring is the good news of what the Word of the kingdom has already done for them. We tell people, “God is already at work in your life.”

And we don’t just tell; we also show. Through the love of Jesus’ Church, we make visible the work God is already doing. It’s a show and tell faith. A come and see way of life.

This is what mission is: participating in God’s ongoing work in the world — a mission that does not depend on our success. By Jesus, through the Spirit, we have been included into the life of the Father, so we are caught up in this same generous sowing. We speak then this good news generously, everywhere.

As Christ’s Church, we are freed from judging our neighbors by what kind of soil we think they are. We are also freed from scarcity and stinginess. Instead, we lavish the love and goodness we have received from God on others — even to the point of wastefulness.

Just as our efforts do not save us, our efforts do not secure the harvest. Christ secures the harvest. God does not merely respond to good soil; God is the one who creates good soil. Even our faith is a gift from God. It is only by God’s grace that we aren’t unfertile soil. Father God is faithful and persistent even to poor soil.

There’s always more

We cannot cover everything in a single sermon. Why not get together with your friends and neighbors to study it further? Maybe plan to study this parable with friends or in your connect group? The Bible is God-inspired, Spirit-breathed for everyone. It’s not for pastors and teachers only. The Bible is for every disciple … for you!

And at the heart of everything, the Bible shows us this story:

The Father sent the Son.
The Son died for the whole world.
The Spirit lives in us, waking us up to the reality of the kingdom.

The kingdom is here, the kingdom is unfolding, and the harvest is sure.

The Father has sown his Son for the whole world. 

(PRAYER)  

SONG OF RESPONSE    

Small Group Discussion Questions