Matthew 13: The Sower & the Seed
Passage (NIV): Matthew 13
Preacher: Mark Kingston
Following Jesus · Matthew 13 · Week 2 · The Sower and the seed
[It’s a long one this week….but worth the read!]
God speaks
We start here, because everything depends on it: God speaks words to us. Not occasionally, not only to certain people. Constantly, persistently, over everyone. Words of life, words of intention, words full of longing for us to come home.
But here's what makes his words different from ours. When we speak, we comment on the world around us or describe what we hope might happen. When God speaks, he makes things. He spoke, and the universe came into being (Genesis 1; John 1:1-3). The Bible says his word does not return to him without accomplishing what he sent it out to do (Isaiah 55:11).
His words carry the weight of the one who made everything that exists. So the question isn't whether God is speaking. He is. The question is whether we're in a state to receive it.
Agency: the gift that changes everything
If God's word is that powerful, why isn't everyone transformed by it? Why isn't everything simply fixed?
Because God, in his extraordinary generosity, gives us something remarkable: agency. The genuine right to say yes or no to him. He will not override that. He could speak his word into us with such force that we had no choice but to respond, but that wouldn't be love. That would be control.
So instead he sows. He speaks. He longs. And he waits (Revelation 3:20). .
The soil is your capacity to receive
That ability to respond, to say yes or no to God, to be open or closed, is what Jesus calls your "soil". And note - the soil in this parable isn't fixed. It changes.
It deepens when you keep saying yes to God, in the small, unremarkable moments when he nudges you and you respond. When he asks you to say sorry and you do. When he puts someone on your heart and you actually reach out. When he calls you to forgive and you choose to, even when it costs you something.
And sometimes the ask is bigger than that. Sometimes he says: "Will you step out, take a risk, follow where I'm leading, even though you can't see how it ends?"
Every yes to God, however small, deepens the soil. And deeper soil is where God's word takes root, grows strong, and bears fruit that lasts.
And here's how it's meant to work when the soil is good and deep:
God's word lands.
It puts down roots.
From roots come shoots.
From shoots come fruit.
And in time, the fruit becomes a harvest so abundant it can't stay contained. It starts spilling out into the people around you, your street, your community (Matthew 13:23).
That means peace where there was anxiety. Freedom from things that have been heavy for years. Joy that other people notice and want some of. That's what Jesus means by harvest. And that is what God longs to see in every one of us.
But the thinner the soil, the harder, the rockier, the thornier, the less space his word has to land. It can't root. And if it can't root, it can't grow, and there's no fruit, no harvest, no overflow into others.
That's what's at stake here.
The uncomfortable challenge
Here's how I grew up hearing this parable: good soil equals Christians, bad soil equals everyone else who hasn't responded to God yet. So you breathe a sigh of relief and move on.
But Jesus told this story to his own followers. Which means the thin soil, the rocky soil, the thorny soil, could be any of us, right now. One of the easiest ways to miss God's word to you is to assume it was meant for someone else.
Creeping deafness
Jesus quotes Isaiah in this chapter (Matthew 13:14-15, quoting Isaiah 6:9-10) and says something sobering. When we keep choosing away from God, when anxieties crowd everything out, when wealth deceives us into thinking we're self-sufficient, when we just keep saying no to Him, something begins to happen to us.
Our “soil” thins and hardens. Our hearts grow “callous” (Pachinō in Greek), like the dead skin that builds up on your foot when a shoe rubs in the same place for long enough. It hardens. It stops feeling.
The Bible places the heart at the centre of where we encounter God (see Proverbs 4:23). So when it grows callous, we begin to go deaf and blind to him, slowly, almost imperceptibly.
You might recognise the signs. Things that once moved you don't anymore. Prayer feels hollow. Faith feels like going through the motions, week after week. God feels distant and you're not even sure when that started. These things are not a crisis of intelligence or even of faith. They're evidence of thinning soil.
But, and this is important, it's not always all your fault. Sometimes the circumstances of life do this to us too. Sometimes other people, even in the church, do it to us. If your experience of church has been hard because people have judged or mistreated you in God's name, I'm sorry.
The God of this passage is a God who speaks life over you and longs for you to turn to Him because He wants to heal you (Matthew 13:15).
Three waves of good news
Here's where it gets better!
Look at the farmer in this story
Notice where he throws the seed. The hard path. The rocky edges. The thorny ground. What farmer in their right mind does that? This one does!
Here's the point: God doesn't wait for perfect soil before he speaks life over you. He keeps sowing in the hopeless places. He hasn't given up on you, even if you have. Nothing, not death, not life, not height, not depth, not anything in all creation, can separate you from his love (Romans 8:38-39).You don't need an elaborate prayer
If you're in a season where the soil feels thin and the distance feels real, try this: "God, I can't feel you right now, but I'm still here, and I want your help." That's enough to open a crack in even the hardest ground. It's enough to start. Remember, the Spirit himself intercedes for us when we don't know what to pray (Romans 8:26).It's not all on you
When we can't even carry ourselves to Jesus, we need people who will carry us, like the friends in Mark 2 who tore a hole in a roof to lower their paralysed friend in front of him (Mark 2:1-5). He was healed because of their faith, not his. Here's the big idea: Your prayers for someone struggling can shift things. Their prayers for you can too. The Christian life was never meant to be a solo sport (1 Thessalonians 5:11).
Some questions to take into your week
God longs for a harvest, in you, in the people on your street, in this whole community. He hasn't stopped sowing. He's out there right now, in the supermarket, the neighbourhood park, the marina, speaking words of life over people who don't know it yet. So - here are some questions worth sitting with:
A) If God feels distant right now:
1. How's your soil?
Think about the last time God felt genuinely close - a moment where something stirred in you, where a song or a word or a conversation left you feeling like he was real and near. How long ago was that? Are those moments getting more frequent or less? More vivid or more distant?
2. What's going on?
This isn't about blame - it's about honest reflection. What has life thrown at you recently that might have made it harder to stay open to God? And what habits or choices, if you're really truthful, might be keeping the soil thin - the thing that's always louder than his voice, the pattern you keep returning to, the hurt you haven't dealt with?
3. Do you want more?
Here's the honest question at the heart of this parable. Do you actually want to hear God's word for you - to receive it, let it root, and see what grows? It sounds obvious, but it isn't always. Sometimes the distance feels safer than the closeness. Sometimes we're not sure we trust what he might say. It's okay to admit that. Do you want more of him, even if it's complicated?
4. One small step
If your answer to question 3 is any kind of “yes!” - even a faint, uncertain, half-hearted yes - that's enough to start. What's one thing you could do this week? A single honest prayer? Asking someone you trust to pray with you or for you? Don't reach for something big. Just the smallest possible yes is a good place to start.
B) If God feels close and things are growing:
1. What's growing?
What is it that you sense God has been saying to you lately? Not what you think you should be hearing, but what is actually stirring in you? A concern, a longing, a nudge that keeps coming back? That's worth paying attention to. What is God's word to you right now?
2. Who are you carrying?
Deep soil isn't just for our own benefit - it's so the harvest can overflow into others. Who is God putting on your heart to pray for? A person, a situation, a community? Would you commit to praying for them - not once, not just this week, but faithfully and persistently, for as long as it takes? Peggy and Christine prayed for over a year before anything visibly shifted in their community.
That kind of prayer has changed things before. It can again. The harvest is coming!
