What type of soil for the word of God do I represent?

Matthew 13:1-9 

Jesus left the house and sat by the lakeside, but such large crowds gathered round him that he got into a boat and sat there. The people all stood on the beach, and he told them many things in parables. He said, ‘Imagine a sower going out to sow. As he sowed, some seeds fell on the edge of the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Others fell on patches of rock where they found little soil and sprang up straight away, because there was no depth of earth; but as soon as the sun came up they were scorched and, not having any roots, they withered away. Others fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Others fell on rich soil and produced their crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Listen, anyone who has ears!’

Food for thought!

There are different ways of listening to the word of God, and the fruit which it produces depends on the hearer. The fate of any spoken word depends on the hearer, not the speaker. The same with the Word of God.

Who then are the hearers described and warned in this parable?

(i) There is the hearer with the shut mind. There are people into whose minds the word has no more chance of gaining entry than the seed has of settling into the rocky ground. There are many things which can shut a man's mind. Prejudice can make a man blind to everything he does not wish to see. The unteachable spirit can erect a barrier which cannot easily be broken down.

The unteachable spirit can result from one of two things. It can be the result of pride which does not know that it needs to know; and it can be the result of the fear of new truth and the refusal to adventure into unknown ways. Sometimes an immoral character and a man's way of life can shut his mind. There may be truth which condemns the things he loves and which accuses the things he does; and many a man refuses to listen to or to recognize the truth which condemns him, for there are none so blind as those who deliberately will not see.

(ii) There is the hearer with the mind like the shallow ground. He is the man who fails to think things out and think them through. Some people are at the mercy of everything and everybody. They take a thing up quickly and just as quickly drop it. They must always be in the fashion. They begin some new hobby or begin to acquire some new accomplishment with enthusiasm, but the thing becomes difficult and they abandon it. Many of us have lives littered with things we began and never finished. We can be like that with the word of God. When we hear it or read it we may be swept off our feet with an emotional reaction, only to have the emotion die away soon after.

(iii) There is the hearer who has so many interests in life that often the most important things, get crowded out. It is characteristic of today; life is becoming increasingly crowded and increasingly fast. Many times we are too busy to pray; we become so preoccupied with many things that we forget to study the word of God: our business can take such a grip of us that we are too tired to think of anything else. We must be careful to see that Christ does not get lost in our crowd.

(iv) There is the hearer who is like the good ground. In his reception of the word there are four stages. Like the good ground, his mind is open. He is at all times willing to learn. He is prepared to hear. He is never either too proud or too busy to listen. Many of us would have been saved all kinds of heartbreaks if we had simply stopped to listen to the voice of a wise friend, or to the voice of God. The real hearer is the person who hears and heeds. 

The questions each of us must ask ourselves today are: (1) "What type of soil for the word of God do I represent?" And (2) "How can I improve the disposition of my heart so that the word of God can bear fruit in my life or bear fruit more abundantly?"