Tag Archives: Parable of the Sower

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God’s timing

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this 16-minute message. Or watch the video here on Facebook (the message starts about 25 minutes into the recording). Or read the text summary below.

Psalm 119:105 is a key text for Christian living: “Your word is a lamp for my feet, and a light on my path.” Not only does this verse point us to Scripture – the Word of God – as the source of light in life, but it also tells us something important about how God reveals Godself to us: in small increments.

We think of a lamp or light as a torch, providing a beam of light to shine up a path to see ahead to where we’re going. But the lamp the Psalmist writes about creates just a puddle of light around us – enough to see only the next step. To translate this verse into contemporary times, think of pointing your flashlight down at your feet rather than beaming ahead several meters.

Today’s world is premised on knowing the future and planning strategically and systematically. This is not bad – I do this all the time. But it is not the way God engages with humanity. God points us to a destination but typically does not provide us with the steps.

Let’s look, for example, at the story of Abraham and his descendants. In Genesis 12, God promises that he will make Abraham into a great nation and a blessing to all people. This promise is renewed several times over Abraham’s life. But he has his first child, Isaac, only around the age of 100 years! That’s a long time to wait for the most critical next step to becoming a great nation.

Then Isaac married only at age 40 and had his first son, Esau, at 60. And after Esau sold his birthright to Jacob, Jacob only had his first son, Reuben, at around 80 years. (Making up for lost time, Jacob had his other 11 sons within about half as many years!)

The point here is that there was little sign of God’s promise fulfilled across three generations from God’s promise to Abraham, covering perhaps 200 years. Where are the descents as many as stars in the sky and sand on the seashores? Abraham was given a destination, but he saw only a few steps of this over a very long time. Yet, throughout this time, Abraham was renowned for his deep faith that God was working out God’s purposes in him.

My journey to ordination is not as dramatic as Abraham’s, but it too was long in coming. I became a Christian at age 16, in 1984. Soon after, I began to feel a calling to become a minister. Though it persisted, I ignored it for nearly 20 years. In 2004, the call appeared again with an irresistible insistence. The following year, I started my BTh at TEEC and was licensed to preach. 12 years later, after much adversity, I was ordained deacon and the next year priest. Three years later, in 2021, I was appointed Rector at St Stephen’s. In total, the journey took around 35 years. That’s quite a long time to be journeying towards the fulfilment of a call to pastor a congregation. I knew the destination, but God took God’s good time to make it happen.

Jesus’ parable in Matthew 13 about the seeds sown in different soils tells a similar story. The fruitful crop emerged from seeds scattered on good earth. These seeds had to grow deep roots in healthy, nutritious soil to produce an abundant harvest. It takes time. Plant radishes if you want something quick, though most of us don’t like how they taste! Those who grow fruit trees or olives will know that farming is a long-term investment.

The lesson from these three readings (Genesis, Psalms and Matthew) seems to be that while we may have insight into God’s will for us, for our destination, the path from here to there is often long and opaque. We have to trust God – to trust his Word – that he will do what he says. But we should not expect quick answers.

Romans 8 reminds us that our minds must be governed by the Spirit and that we live in the realm of the Spirit. We do not live on the internet superhighway. We live our lives in the eternal life space of God. And that means being patient and faithful while God takes God’s good time to work out God’s purpose in our lives.

And so, dear ones, as we surrender the whole of ourselves to God, I encourage you to be patient with God and to have faith in God. Give God the space to do what God does best. Remember that the Lord says, “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11).

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Sower, Soil, Seed

Click here to listen to the audio of this 17-minute message. Or watch the YouTube video below, or read the text summary that follows.

Matthew 13: 3b-19 presents to us the well-known parable of the sower, in which seeds are sown on four types of soil – only one of which is good soil that produces good crops. Usually our sermons focus on the types of soil. Today, I’d like us to focus on some of the key characters, and imagine that we are that character.

1. The Sower. The key thing that stands out about the Sower is that he is careless. He scatters seed carelessly, without thinking. He is given a bag of precious seed, that presumably had significant value and a limited supply. And he scatters it left, right and centre without thought for where it might land.

If we are the Sower, then God is calling us to be responsible for the opportunities God gives us to do the work of God in the world. We should not be careless; we should be responsible. The opportunities we are give to do God’s work are precious and we should treat them all, even the tiny ones, with a sense of gravitas and reverence.

2. The Soil. The key thing that stands out about the Soil is that it is not conducive. Some of it is compressed and hard, exposing seeds to the elements and birds. Some of it is rocky and shallow, not allowing seeds to take root. Some of it is riddled with weeds that dominate the soil and do not allow the seeds the opportunity to breathe and grow. It is only the fourth Soil that Jesus says is ‘good’. It is good because it is able to create a conducive environment for the seeds to grow and mature.

If we are the Soil, then God is calling us to be receptive to the voice of God. Jesus ends his parable with, “Whoever has ears, let them hear!” Some commentators argue that the soil refers to our ears – it is our capacity to be hear God’s voice, to receptive to the seeds God drops in our ears, that Jesus is calling for.

3. The Seeds. Arguably the hero of the story is the Seed. Ultimately, the Seed is central. The key thing that stands out about the Seed is that is wasted. We know that seeds are a precious commodity; there are seed banks around the world that serve to preserve this precious commodity. But in this story, three quarters of the Seed is wasted – it cannot grow, cannot flourish, cannot produce a crop. Only one quarter of the Seed is productive. Imagine if only 10 hours of the work you do each week is actually useful or productive, and that 30 hours are wasted. How disillusioning that would be!

If we are the Seed, then God is calling us to be fruitful. Jesus wants us to be productive – to produce more than we started with. He is looking for a small input and a large output. Indeed, he quantifies the productivity: “it produced a crop – a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown”. That’s a big increase from the current 25%. And now Jesus says, if we have ears, then hear!

This is a central message of this parable:
we must be fruitful and productive.

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