Parable of the Sower
Pastor Terry Wilcox
Matthew 13:1-23
Does God Talk to You?
“God whispers in my delights, speaks in my problems, and shouts in my perplexities.”
One truth is clear – God intends that His communications be expressed in my and my actions.
To understand parables – note the players and the objects:
- The farmer =
- The seed = the message about the Kingdom
- The soil =
In the Hebrew context – the heart is the seat of emotion and .
Four conditions of the soil. Note the soil is essentially the same earth – it’s what had been added to it or what’s happened to it.
- The soil of a path is packed hard. Matthew 13:4 & 9
A. First application is to the Pharisees, but be careful there are hard-hearted people with hearing problems in churches today.
B. When we have convictions we don’t live out, we block our sensitivity to further truth.
- The second group is Matthew 13:5 & 20
Remember the heart = intellect, , and .
A. Emotional Christians – enthusiastic and expressive.
B. Intellectual Christians – never allow Jesus Christ to deal with feelings.
C. The rock under the thin layer of intellectual accent to faith is made of unresolved ,
stunted , and conflicting !
Burned out Christians have roots stopped by the bed rock of the unsurrendered will, unrecognized , or refusal to think through the .
- Thorny soil
Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts of these parables indicate Jesus was speaking about the competitive loyalties of worry, , and pleasure.
Worrying over an aspect of our life is a sure sign we are trying to accomplish our with our .
- The good soil is productive. Matthew 13:8 & 23
Result of hearing is the transformation of our .
Galatians 5:22
God does speak! We can hear Him – if we truly hear, we are motivated by love to produce the fruit of what we hear.
Personal Notes