The Understanding Soil

Come back with me to your high school math class. For some of you, you just got excited, and for others there’s a sense of dread. Remember learning the concepts of Algebra? Even for the “math people,” it required focus and wrestling with the material. You had to ask questions and practice in order for true learnedness and understanding to take place.

I was reading through the Parable of the Sower and this truth remains the same. To bring us up to speed, there is a Sower and there are four different soils that the seed falls on that produce four separate outcomes. The seed lands on a path, rocky ground, among the thorns, and in good soil.

You can fill in the blanks by reading in Matthew 13. The soil represents the hearer of the Gospel – the heart of that person. It’s the first and fourth sets of the seed’s landing, the path and the good soil, I want to bring your attention to.

As Jesus begins to explain the meaning of the parable to His disciples, He describes the first hearer this way, “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it . . .” (Matthew 13:19). This is the heart of he who represents the path. Of the last, Jesus describes, “As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it” (Matthew 13:23).

Of the middle two soils, I’ll say this, they had spurts of growth that eventually died out for lack of depth when going through trials (rocky soil) and were distracted by the cares of the world (thorny soil).

Understanding. This is the word that stood out to me in the parable. He who lacked any growth at all is described as the one who heard and did not understand. And of the one who produced a yield, it was he who understood.

This begs the question, how do we understand? Well, let’s not make it any harder than it needs to be. In math class, there were those who sat through class, heard the teaching, and resigned themselves to failure because they didn’t engage. Surely, there are people who are more inclined to numbers than others, and that may make math class slightly easier for one person compared to the next, but understanding for either person requires wrestling with the material.

Friends, our understanding of the Gospel is no different. It’s the one who hears the words of Jesus and turns away uninterested and uncurious that presents as the seed that fell on the path. And it is he who receives the Gospel with a yearning after the depths of its Truth that represents good soil.

Please don’t hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying things need to click immediately for you to be good soil. You do not need to be a “math person” to understand math. Like any requirements of understanding, you need to engage to learn, and you need to ask questions to grow deeper.

We can practice this today, friends. And not by knowing your Systematic Theology, but rather by simply asking Jesus via prayer and by reading His Word, what are You like? Teach me more. Show Yourself to me. In doing so, we are tilling the grounds of our hearts, allowing room for growth and depth and over the course of this pursuit we will find ourselves being that good soil that produces a yield of 100, 60 and 30-fold.