GOSPEL MEDITATION #183

Sower Parable, purpose of Parables, and Interpretation

Mark 4:1-20

1. Find a quiet place without distractions.
2. Be comfortably alert, still, and at peace.
3. Say the Lord’s Prayer. Sing or cant the Jesus Prayer.
4. Pray for family, friends, neighbors, and yourself.
5. Slowly and carefully read the passage of Scripture.
6. From memory, determine the central points.
7. 20 verses, 3 sections, The Sower Parable perhaps the most vital of all parables to be understood by followers of Jesus. The hearers are the Twelve but also a larger group of serious disciples.
8. Farming context, the sower’s seed would fall into 4 different circumstances: some on the path, some on rocky ground, some among weeds, but other seed sown on good soil.
9. In verse 8 a great promise is given – there will be fruit and this to be understood as a growing of the Kingdom of God.
10. The reason for parables may look back to Isaiah 6:9-10. For reasons that are most difficult to understand, hearers of the parables containing the truth of God yet do not experience forgiveness. There is no satisfactory resolution to this conundrum.
11. The interpretation of the parable now, and Jesus interprets only 3 of His parables., this one, the sower, but also the Parable of the Weeds (Matthew 13:36-43, and, as it is thought, the Parable of the Net (Matthew 13:47-50). All of these have to do with evangelism.
12. The path: of necessity seed, the Word, will fall on ears only momentarily and Satan rushes in (and in ways unexplained here) and takes away the message of the Gospel.
13. Rocky ground: at first there is joy but it is short lived since a genuine conversion, an inner working of the Holy Spirit, has not taken place. It does not take much for the Word to be rejected. Very common experience.
14. Thorny ground: This is more difficult and it is not clear whether a real conversion has taken place; commentators are divided. Bottom line – no fruit is borne and to me indicates no real conversion.
15. Good soil: Here is the promise to the Christian – there will be fruit, the Kingdom will grow, and the fruit varies from person to person.