July 12, 2026 | The Parable of the Sower

This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea, and great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat down.

And the whole crowd stood on the beach.

And he told them many things in parables, saying, A sower went out to sow.

And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them.

Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil.

And immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil.

But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away.

Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.

Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

He who has ears, let him hear the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Please be seated.

It is a joy once again for Nancy and me to be back with the St.

Paul's family.

It is important that I begin by saying to you all what a beautiful job you have done in this season saying goodbye to the Browns.

I know that they felt uh very honored and loved as difficult as it was and is for them to walk through this transition.

I want to thank you all for representing the Lord so well, and I want to thank your amazing staff, uh Clay and Cindy and Mark, and all of the staff and leaders here for stepping up uh in this season of transition.

Now it's the middle of July, and it seems to me this crowd is a little bigger than what we might expect.

Um is there something happening later today that you all may have heard about?

I understand there might be some kind of update or announcement that's going to happen this morning.

And uh speaking of that, I can't say enough about your search team and your vestry under Taylor and Murphy's leadership.

They've worked hard, they've prayed faithfully through this call process, and I believe the Lord has been very, very gracious in it.

So we're thankful to them, but also very, very thankful to the Lord.

But before we get to the big announcement, you get to hear a sermon.

And I'll limit it to 45 or 50 minutes.

Don't don't worry.

But uh, as we open God's word together, let me let me pray for us.

Father God, we do thank you for this day, for your goodness and kindness.

We thank you, Lord, for your word, and we pray that you would open our minds, our hearts, our lives that we might receive your word today, that uh we might know your love and the grace that's found in Jesus.

And that in knowing that love and that grace we might be transformed into his likeness.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So for the the next few weeks in uh the church's electionary, we're gonna uh be looking at uh some parables.

These are stories that fill the gospel, stories that Jesus told, that Jesus used all the time.

And the ones that we'll be looking at in the few next few weeks are mostly agricultural stories.

Jesus was speaking to an agricultural society.

He was speaking in terms and in images that they could understand and they could relate to.

But always when he was teaching them in parables, he was speaking about the kingdom, the kingdom of God.

He was using the stories in ways that people could understand and apply to their lives.

And I want to say that these stories are every bit as applicable to our lives today as they were to the lives of those whom Jesus first spoke them to.

Today's parable, as we heard read by Cindy, is about a farmer, a sower who sows seed, and how depending on where that seed falls, the growth of the crop has different outcomes.

Remember, we just heard it, some seed fell on a hard path, others fell on rocky places, others fell among the thorns, and the final seed fell among the good soil.

And each of those scenarios produced a different outcome.

It was only the seed that fell on good soil that could produce a crop.

One great advantage that we have in this parable, not like all of the parables Jesus told was, he actually a few verses later sits down with his disciples and explains the parable to them.

And so we get the benefit of that explanation.

As I've already said, the parable is about the kingdom, it's about the kingdom of God.

That is the reign of God, the gracious and good reign of God over the hearts and lives of men and women, people just like you.

And Jesus' life and his death is right.

Everything about Jesus was ushering in a new kingdom.

Think about that.

These Jewish people who lived under the Roman rule and kingdom, Jesus comes and now offers a new kind of kingdom.

And in this story, the the main character is the sower.

The ESV says a sower, but it's actually the sower, and he represents God.

And that's important for us to understand that what Jesus is saying in this parable is that God is up to something.

He's actively at work in our world.

And he is about the sowing of seed.

He sows everywhere because he wants everyone.

He's sowing seed for a purpose because he's planting a crop.

And even if we're not farmers, we know enough that there's no crop without seed.

And what does Jesus say that the seed is when it comes to the kingdom of God, to a kingdom harvest or a kingdom crop?

And verse 18 and 19, he says, hear the parable of the sower.

When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, you see, that's it.

It's the word of the kingdom is the seed.

The seed is the word of the kingdom.

It's the word, it's the good news.

It's the gospel.

Mark's gospel begins with these first words out of Jesus' mouth.

He says, the kingdom of God is at hand.

It's coming.

The kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent, that is, turn and believe the good news, or believe the gospel.

The psalmist says, Blessed are the feet of them that bring good news.

You see, there's no plant, there's no crop or harvest without the word.

Because the word is the seed, it's the message of the kingdom.

And if we go back to the book of beginnings and the book of Genesis, just as it was the word of God that spoke creation into existence, now Jesus is speaking another word, but this word is about the kingdom and it gives life.

It's the word of God's reign over our lives in the person of Jesus Christ.

And it's that word that makes the difference between a productive harvest and no harvest at all.

Beloved, the word of God is so important.

It is the seed.

It's where it all begins.

And it's where we must begin.

You read the book of Acts, and how did the church go from that small handful of people to thousands upon thousands, eventually overtaking the Roman Empire?

It was through the proclamation of the good news, of the gospel, of the news of God's kingdom and Jesus Christ, anointed in the Spirit, transforming lives, creating communities.

And that exactly what's happened here at St.

Paul's over the last generation.

Through the Word of God, a creation, a community has been created, and new life has sprung up in your lives and in this community.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believed.

He said, the Jews demand a sign, Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews, folly to the Gentiles, but to those who are being saved, both Jew and Greek, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

So in this parable that Jesus is telling, we have the sower and the seed, which is the word.

Those are the consistent things.

We know what God is doing.

He's proclaiming his word, he's sowing his seed, he's always up to it.

But we have these four different outcomes.

And the outcome has to do with the different type and quality of soil in which the farmer sows his seed.

The first seed, as we heard, was on the path.

And obviously, a path is hard.

It's beaten down by all the traffic on it.

And it's not receptive to the seed.

It doesn't even receive it.

It simply seed sits on top of a hard path and birds come and pick it off.

And that's the first seed.

And I think we all know folks like this.

We may have even been a folk like that at one point in our lives where this word of the kingdom just, we don't understand it.

We don't have an interest in spiritual things and kingdom things.

It just doesn't make sense.

It's like a foreign language to us.

I don't know if y'all heard uh remember hearing a few years ago, they uh talked about students in classrooms had a uh a tone, it was called a mosquito tone on their phones, that that the older we get, somewhere in our 20s, we can't hear that high-pitched mosquito tone, but the kids can.

And that tone became very, very popular in class for texting back and forth because the teachers were oblivious to it, and the kids were were messaging one another.

Well, Jesus is saying that there's the same kind of thing that going on here.

There's a certain segment of people who can't hear and comprehend the message of the kingdom.

Their hearts are hard, and for whatever reason, they're not receptive to the message of God's redeeming love in Christ.

And that's so sad.

Because what they're missing is the message of the one who loves them most completely, the one who wants them and desires them to live in relationship with them.

And if we share the message with them, it's easy picking for the evil one, like a bird to come and snatch the seed away on the path.

The next seed fell on rocky places, and this seed gets off to a good start, Jesus says it sprouts, but then because it has no depth of soil and the rocks, it quickly withers.

Jesus said, This are those who fall away because of trouble or persecutions that come their way with the kingdom because they're not adequately rooted.

There's a momentary experience of joy over the word and the kingdom, but there's a driving expectation or agenda that you know that means that life's only going to be good things.

There's not going to be difficulty or trouble, and they fall away.

Jesus was so clear to the disciples, he was preparing them, you will have trouble in this world if you follow me.

That's why he said we must count the cost.

People will reject us and the message we bear if we identify ourselves with Jesus.

Don't you know that Jesus in his own ministry, up to this speaking this parable, had experienced everything that he's talked about.

Those who didn't understand, those who initially received him, but then fell away the next day or the next week.

The third category, that's the seed that fell among the thorns.

Those are those who receive the word, but then they allow themselves and that word to be choked out by the worries of life and by the deceitfulness of riches, of wealth.

Tim Keller says it so well.

He said, sin isn't only doing bad things, it's more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things.

Sin is building your life and meaning on anything, even a very good thing, more than building your life on God.

Whatever we build our life on will drive us and enslave us.

And says sin ultimately is idolatry.

We can take something good and we can make it our God.

You see, the thorns in Jesus' parable are those things that distract us from God, from Him, from relationship.

They choke out the word of God in our life.

So Jesus has laid out three outcomes so far stuff that keeps the seed from growing in health and keeps it from producing a flock.

The first one, think about it, involved unbelief.

The second one involved fear, and the third one involved distraction.

Those are the enemies.

But thanks be to God, there is another category.

Jesus talks about those who hear the word and receive it.

And those are the ones that bear a crop, sometimes a hundredfold, sometimes sixty, sometimes thirty.

It doesn't really matter.

Are you bearing fruit, not how much?

And that's what God wants for us.

It's what he wants for you and for me.

That's what he's up to here at St.

Paul's.

That's why the sower sows the seed.

Because this is God's heart, this is God's desire, and his word, and his word alone can accomplish this in us and through us.

James says in his first letter, chapter one, he says, Therefore get rid of all moral filth and evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

You see, Jesus told this parable not only so that we can understand what's happening with all the people around us, why folks don't get on board with the kingdom, but I think he also told us so that we could tend the soil of our lives and to make sure that the word of God takes root in us.

You see, beloved, we need to nurture the soil.

And what is the soil?

Listen to the parable.

The soil is a heart.

All of that stuff is about the heart.

What's going on in our heart?

The prophet said, when the spirit is poured out, he'll take the heart of stone and replace it with the heart of flesh.

It's the work of the Holy Spirit to prepare the soil of our hearts that we can remove the rocks and pull back the thorns and soften those hard places in our hearts and in our lives.

So, what about you and what about us?

The good news is that we can ask God even today to help us to see the impediments, those things in our hearts that would keep us from fully embracing his kingdom.

We can confess as we do in our worship, we can seek him.

We can always come to him and ask him to do the heart surgery, to do the work in us, and he's gracious to do that.

We're not condemned to any of these categories.

He's calling us to the fruitful and productive soil.

You see, the farmer is God in Christ, he's always sowing seed, he's always pursuing you and me and our neighbors and our family and those in this community.

And the word is the seed of a new life, it's the gospel.

And the harvest belongs to him.

It's not our harvest, it's it's his.

We simply believe.

Jesus said it as he began his ministry.

Repent and believe the good news.

And so, beloved, we offer ourselves to him.

And there's more.

Because God also invites us to be bearers of the seed, to be bears of this gospel and this word, and to be part of his workers and gathering up a harvest.

And that's what he's up to here at St.

Paul's.

And that's what he's up to in our world.

And here it is.

This kingdom that Jesus is talking about.

This kingdom will not disappoint.

And this kingdom will not end.

Because, as we'll hear later in this chapter, this kingdom is the pearl of great price.

It's the only thing worthy of our affections and our life and our passion.

Don't be fearful, don't be distracted.

Don't miss God's love in Christ.

Because the kingdom has a king.

And that king is Jesus.

And he's the one who died for us.

And he's the one who loves us completely.

And he's the one who bears fruit in us and through us.

To the glory of God the Father.

Amen.