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What Kind of Soil Are You Being?

Jesus was a master storyteller. He didn’t hand out abstract theological truths like math equations; He offered vivid, unexpected stories that linger in the imagination. They’re often strange. They resist easy interpretation. And they don’t always end the way we expect.

One of those stories is the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1–23). It’s the story of a farmer who scatters seed absolutely everywhere. He throws it not just on well-prepared farmland, but on the footpath, on shallow soil full of rocks, and even among thorns. Only some of it grows. But the farmer throws it anyway.

Jesus later explains that the seed is the Word of God, that God is calling us back to himself in love and forgiveness. The different kinds of soil represent the different ways people receive that Word. Some hearts are hard and closed off. Some are shallow. Some are full of thorns and worries. But some are open, deep, and ready. People who receive the word this way bear fruit.

 

Parables Don’t Just Tell You Something. They Do Something.

Before we get into the soils, it’s important to notice how Jesus teaches this story. His disciples actually ask Him: “Why do you speak to them in parables?”

And Jesus answers with a strange quote from Isaiah 6, from the famous passage where Isaiah says, “Here I am, send me.” But what follows in that chapter is a hard truth: God tells Isaiah that the people will hear but not understand. They will see, but not perceive. Not because God is trying to confuse them, but because their hearts are already hardened.

Parables, then, are not just about conveying truth. They reveal and conceal at the same time. They draw in those who are seeking and quietly expose those who are not.

As Eugene Peterson once said, parables are like “narrative time bombs.” You don’t always know when they’ll go off. But when they do, they expose something to you about your heart.

That’s exactly what happens in this parable. Jesus isn’t just describing four types of people. He’s holding up a mirror that’s worth looking into every day.

 

Four Soils, Four Heart Conditions

So, what kind of soil are you being right now?

1. The Path: Hardened Ground

This is the heart that’s hardened. Life, pain, cynicism, and even religious overexposure can create a kind of compacted soul where nothing gets in anymore. The Word is spoken, but it never sinks in. It’s snatched away before it can even start to grow.

Maybe you’ve been burned before. Maybe you’re numb. Maybe you just feel like you already know the way it is, and you’ve stopped expecting anything new from God.

But even hardened paths can be broken up. And the Sower still flings the seed there — on purpose.

2. The Rocky Ground: Shallow Roots

This is the heart that responds quickly, emotionally, with enthusiasm, but there’s no depth. When trouble or discouragement comes, faith withers.

It’s easy to get excited after a retreat, a great sermon, or a spiritual mountaintop moment. But if we don’t slow down and let the Word go deep, that change won’t last. We need to let the Word of God go deep enough to touch our wounded places and reshape our habits, deep enough to convict us of our sin and embrace the deep hidden parts with his love.

Jesus invites us to be rooted, not just roused.

3. The Thorny Ground: Choked by Clutter

This is probably the most familiar soil for many of us. Here, the Word is received and starts to grow, but it's competing with everything else.

Busyness. Anxiety. The pressure to succeed. The lure of money or approval or distraction. These aren't inherently evil things, but when they take center stage, they suffocate the life of the Word.

Jesus says the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of wealth can choke out the Word until it becomes unfruitful. It’s still there, but it doesn’t thrive.

Sometimes subtraction is the first step toward growth. What do you need to let go of?

4. The Good Soil: Open, Deep, and Fruitful

This is the heart that receives, absorbs, and holds onto the Word. It doesn’t just hear it. It lets it go deep and keeps it as the center focus. With time and growth, this Word bears fruit.

It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being open, receptive, and rooted. This soil grows fruit not for itself, but for others. That’s what fruit is for.

 

The Good Soil Becomes the Sower

At the end of the parable, Jesus doesn’t say the good soil just enjoys its private harvest. He says it produces fruit — thirty, sixty, even a hundredfold. That means multiplication. That means more seeds.

That means that the soil becomes the sower.

When the Word goes deep in us — when we’ve received the grace and love of Christ, not just in theory but in the mess of our real lives — we don’t just sit there bearing fruit for ourselves. We begin to throw seed, too.

Not carefully. Not selectively. Not measuring whether someone seems “ready” or not.

But wildly. Like the original Sower. Forgiveness and love don’t stop at the boundaries of worthiness or convenience. We move through life broadcasting love like the indiscriminate sower of the parable. We love because Jesus first loved us. We sow love and forgiveness and life into others because Jesus has first sowed love and forgiveness and life into us.

You may have received a word today that you needed to hear. Maybe it was “loved.” Or “forgiven.” Or “clean.” Or “known.” Those are Gospel seeds. And they’re meant to grow and be scattered again.

(Pastor John threw small sponges out into the congregation with Gospel seed words on them. This paragraph makes a lot more sense when you know what happened during the preaching of the sermon. The words were: Loved, Known, Saved, Whole, Clean, Alive, Freed, Heard, and Found.)

 

Final Reflection

This parable isn't about sorting people into spiritual boxes. It’s not even asking, “What kind of soil are you?”

It’s better to ask: What kind of soil am I being right now? What kind of soil am I being in this situation or in this relationship? Am I receptive to God’s message of love and forgiveness to me — and am I willing to put that love and forgiveness into the lives of those around me?

Soil changes. Hard hearts can be softened. Shallow roots can be deepened. Thorns can be pulled. And good soil can grow more and more fruit. It’s not so much by striving, but by abiding in Christ.

The Sower is generous. Recklessly generous. And the Word is still being scattered, even in this blog.

Let it take root.