The Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-20)

Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels and does not include many items found in the other three. In Matthew’s account of this parable in chapter 13 of his Gospel it is included with several parables that Mark does not mention alongside his account. The obvious explanation is that the Holy Spirit guided Mark to mention what was necessary for his Gospel.

It has been suggested that Jesus could have used a nearby sower as the reason for using one in his parable. Of course, there is no way that suggestion can be proved, although it does highlight an important aspect of conveying important messages, and that is the use of illustrations. Of course, as we will see, illustrations alone are not sufficient, and even the ones chosen by Jesus had to be explained by him.

The occasion of the parable

Jesus had become a popular teacher, evidenced by the large crowd who gathered to hear him. The contents of the parable must be connected to the needs of the crowd. Jesus is not like politicians who give speeches to an audience but who are delivering the message for someone else who needs to hear it, perhaps someone living in a foreign country.

What can we say about the crowd? Probably there would be a lot of diverse factors among them. There would be gender distinction, age differences, intellectual disparities, social dissimilarities regarding wealth, various health issues, political ideas, personal features. In effect, that crowd would be like most crowds then and now.

It is also likely that curiosity about Jesus would have intrigued those who made up the crowd and that curiosity could be varied as well. There are always people that join the latest movement, there are always people who are hoping that someone will come along who will meet their hopes and aspiration, and there are people who just like to know what is happening.

Since so many had gathered, there would have been a sense of expectancy in the air. Maybe some had gathered because they had heard Jesus was a good speaker and they enjoyed listening to an orator. Or maybe they had heard that he was easy to understand and they were fed up listening to messages beyond their grasp or interest. Perhaps they anticipated an address that would stir up national Jewish pride, especially as they were a people in subjection to a stronger power.

I wonder what they thought when they heard a story about a sower. We are not told what the crowd thought, but we are informed about what some of his disciples thought. It looks as if they were puzzled by an unusual message. They could not understand why he said what he did. And if they did not understand him, we can assume that most in the crowd did not do so either.

But there was one detail about Jesus that they had picked up since they had become his disciples and it was that he was approachable. Perhaps they were encouraged to ask him by the twelve. In the short time that they had been his followers they had discovered that they could ask him about the messages that he had given. No doubt, he had encouraged them to do so. So they could have told their friends that they could ask him. I suspect they received a reply very different from what they had expected.

The purpose of the parables (vv. 10-13)

Jesus says several things about why he used parables in his teaching. First, he used this form of parable at that time when he was speaking to those who were not genuine disciples. It looks as if the mark of a true disciple was that he or she would ask Jesus for more explanations about what he had said. So what was important was not the listening to the parable, but an ongoing interest in what the parable meant.

Second, this method of teaching in parables was divine judgement on a rebellious people. We can see that is the case from the fact that Jesus quotes from Isaiah 6, which was the message that God gave to Isaiah regarding how his hearers would respond to this message. An intriguing aspect of the message given to Isaiah is that the apostle John says that the person whom Isaiah saw was Jesus before he became a human. So, in a way, Jesus had given the same message back them as he was giving now. Or to put it another way, he was saying that his listeners would be as unresponsive as Isaiah’s listeners were. This explanation makes the use of parables very serious.

Third, it looks as if Jesus had expected those who asked him the question to have known what it meant. They had been given a great privilege in that he had instructed them about the kingdom of God, and that knowledge should have been sufficient to enable them to understand the parable. His rebuke of them indicates that they should have been grasped the message of this particular parable. Sometimes a set of pupils assesses a teacher and says that he is useless because they cannot understand him. Yet perhaps the teacher knows what they should have understood by now, and the failure to do so is theirs and not his. As far as Jesus was concerned, his disciples here could not say that the fault was in the methods or in the message that Jesus used. He was the perfect teacher with the most appropriate methods. Could he make a similar assessment of us and how we react to his teachings? This complaint was made by him near the start of his ministry, and towards the end he had to say to Philip, ‘Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip?’ (John 14:9).

The interpretation of the parable and Jesus

Who is the sower? Probably initially, the sower is Jesus himself, and later on it would include anyone who would be called to sow the same seed on his behalf. So we can regard all those who pass on the message of the kingdom as sowers.

The first detail that we can observe from the explanation given by Jesus is that he only has one seed to sow, and that is his Word. What does he mean by ‘Word’ here? He could be referring to the Word of God in general, although it is possible to regard the term as meaning a specific message. If it is the latter, then it looks as if the focus of the message is entrance into the kingdom.

The second detail to note is that Jesus knew wherever the seed had been sown. We might imagine that the sower is depicted as indiscriminate, almost careless, but I don’t think that is what is being stressed. We have to remember that Jesus is referring to various kinds of people and the seed had been sown among them, and their responses are illustrated by what would happen if a sower had sown in such places. The point is that Jesus knows where his message has been heard.

A third detail is that Jesus knows what the outcome will be of everyone who hears the message he has sent. It is not that he merely knows the initial response, which he does. But he knows much more than that. If we think of the large crowd for a moment, Jesus knew where all of them would end up, whatever their initial response might have been. It is possible to imagine a situation in which his disciples would be rejoicing over ones whom they thought were converted but who Jesus knew would not be genuine disciples in the long run.

The interpretation of the parable and the crowd

Jesus says that there will be six responses to his message and three of them will be bad and three of them will be good. The first three responses are each illustrated by a different area of where the seed fell, and the second three responses are each found in the good soil.

The three bad responses

The first of them is caused by the devil. It is interesting that in the parable he is only to blame for one of the wrong responses. He may have a hand in the other two bad responses, but he is not said to be the main cause of them. But he is said to be so with regard to the first wrong response. This detail indicates that the initial stage of hearing the gospel is a very vulnerable time as far as responding rightly is concerned.

How does the devil take away the word from such a person? I suspect he takes it out of their minds by getting them to think of something else. He does so by putting other ideas into their thought processes and he can use any topic for doing so. Personally, I think one of his most successful diversions is to talk about the weather. We are hearing his word at the moment and the seed is being sown by him. After the sermon is over, we need to make sure that we are not one of his birds who by our words will take the seed out of someone’s mind. If you find a sudden urge to speak about a pointless topic, resist it and don’t mention it, even if you think it is important.

The second wrong response has a very encouraging beginning because they receive it with joy. Why are they happy? Because they have been told that their sins are forgiven by God and they are going to be permanent members of the kingdom of God. Nothing wrong with joy, but there is something wrong with a person whose interest in divine things has no depth. I suspect that the reason why joy is mentioned is because it was the only change that could be seen. And joy by itself is not enough, and it will not take long for that to be shown. On the first sign of anything unpleasant they will give up professing to follow Jesus. They won’t even think twice about giving up what gave them their joy.

The third wrong response is one that is affected by worldliness. It is not enough for them that they are promised a place in God’s kingdom. In addition, they want a successful life in this world. Jesus uses a very graphic picture – the things of this world murder the seed of the word, which of course indicates that worldliness is a very dangerous enemy. I wonder how many it has slain. How many in that large crowd eventually felt the grip of worldliness to be irresistible? I suspect this is a real problem for Christians in the western world, far more dangerous than the prospects of persecution.

The three good responses

Jesus stresses that what distinguishes them from the others is that they accept his message in its entirety and not just aspects of it. What does it mean to accept the message? I don’t think Jesus only means that they accept it is true – after all, that could have been said of the second and third bad responses initially. Instead I think he means that they regard it as requiring appropriate responses from them and that they make those responses. What are they?

Repentance is a required response if we want to bear fruit. Of course, we commit ourselves in faith to Jesus, but we also repent of our previous wrong behaviour. Repentance includes tears, but it is more than tears. It is leaving what we know to be wrong, and it is lifelong. The good fruit includes repenting on your deathbed, if you are conscious then.

Assimilation of the teaching of Christ is also part of the required response. In his teachings, Jesus tells his disciples what to do. None of his requirements are unreasonable, but they are all requirements that he expects them to implement. I suspect this explains the difference in the amount of fruit that is produced. Those of us who are his disciples will not know how much fruit we will have in the end, but we do know how much of his Word we are taking seriously at the moment. And we also know that there is a connection between the two that will be revealed one day.