Parable of the sower

Parable of the sower

 

Mark 4:3-9 『Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow: And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. And some fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And the other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred. And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.』

This parable tells the secret of heaven. In Matthew 13:11, “He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.” Here, “you” are the disciples. Only the disciples of Jesus were allowed to know the secret. All people in Christ are disciples of Jesus. He who is in Christ becomes a disciple not because he believes in Jesus, but because he died on the cross with Jesus. Why does Jesus ask us to deny ourselves? This is because the ‘self’ is the old fleshly person who kills the spirit.

So, “the purpose of Jesus coming to the world” was to save the spirit. The spirit is those who were in Christ in the kingdom of God. However, those who were in Christ separated from Christ and became trapped in this world. The Bible says in Ephesians 5:31-32, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.” This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.』The church means the spirit of the saints. Because the spirit was trapped in the earth, the material of this world, it died, and the living being that became a human became a soullike being. “Dead” means that the relationship with God is broken.

In order to know the secrets of heaven, believers must know “who the sower is, who the seed is, and what the field (land) is.” The sower is God, and the seed is the word of God. The field depends on the hearts of people. In John 15:1, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.” God is the farmer and the sower. The story of the Garden of Eden appears in Genesis chapter 2. There is the fruit of the tree of life and the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The fruit of the tree of life is the fruit that gives eternal life.

Man eating the fruit of the tree of life and gaining eternal life is explained in Genesis 3:22. 『And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:』 If a person eats the fruit of the tree of life, he will live forever. However, if a person does not eat from the tree of life, he or she will be kicked out of the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 3:24, “So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.』

『a flaming sword which turned every way』 symbolizes the law. The law makes us aware of sin, and sinners will inevitably die. However, God hidden the fruit of life (Christ) in the law. “Sinners must eat the fruit of life, but God forbids them from eating it” because they cannot eat the fruit of the tree of life while leaving the kingdom of God. So, God puts spirits into the dust, turns them into humans, and asks them to try to become like God themselves. So, when they realize that “it is impossible to achieve righteousness on one’s own,” they should give up and seek the fruit of the tree of life (Christ) hidden in the law. So, God says, “If sinners give up trying to achieve righteousness through the law,” He will send Christ, and He will achieve righteousness for them as long as they enter into Christ.

The seed refers to Christ as the seed of promise. However, the land expresses the human heart, and the land is dirt. The basis of man is soil. In Genesis 3:23, “Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.” To cultivate the land is to sow seeds. Cultivating a person's heart is to receive the word of God and bear fruit with it.

In Genesis 3:17-19, “And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast heard unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is.” the ground for your sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of your face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust thou return.』

If a person thinks, "In order to live on this earth, he must make food, and so God did it to cultivate the land and make a living," that is a worldly thought. If he thinks worldly, he does not know the fruit of eternal life. 『shalt thou eat bread』is the food of eternal life. He told us to dig up the ground (heart) to obtain food for eternal life.

In Genesis 2:15, “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” God created humans in the world outside the Garden of Eden. So God led Adam to the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden symbolizes the kingdom of God. These words contain God's promise to lead humans to the kingdom of God. In 『to dress it and to keep it』, it means the fruit of the tree of life. God tells Adam to cultivate and protect the tree of life. If people do not cultivate and protect the land, they cannot eat the fruit of the tree of life.

『In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,』We can see that a person must sweat to obtain the fruit of eternal life. So the parable of sowing seeds is to obtain fruit that lasts forever. “The reason why we must eat eternal fruit” is because humans are not eternal beings. In the parable of the sowing field, four types of fields are introduced. In other words, it represents the minds of four types of people. Only one type of person is a good field. A good field is one where the seed of the word can fall into the heart and become life. A good field is a field that is in good condition for plowing and sowing seeds.

『Cultivating the mind』 means that "those who study the words of the Bible countless times and realize that they have sinned in the kingdom of God and are trapped on this earth" become those who have cultivated the field of the heart. However, many church people today think that they "sanctify the state of their hearts so that when they hear the word of God, they understand it well, and so the word becomes life with joy." They believe that in order to create a good field, "one must obey and practice the word of God to attain a state of holy heart." However, humans cannot become holy on their own. “Cultivating a good field” means “realizing that people are mortal beings apart from God, repenting, knowing that salvation is impossible without Christ, and dying with Christ.” To die with Christ is to cultivate. Dying is the death of the heart of greed. Salvation can be achieved only when “a person realizes his or her sins through the law, realizes that he or she must die through sacrifice, and discovers Christ within it.” This is “the meaning of cultivating the land.”

Of the four fields of the mind, except for the good fields, the remaining fields are where people place their minds on the world. So a bad field means a field that has no interest in the kingdom of God. “Those who realize that they are those who have left God, those who are trapped in darkness, and those who need the fruit of life” are the good fields. Therefore, God’s grace and work appear only in good fields. The Bible tells us that “the greed that caused us to leave God must die in order to enter the kingdom of God.” One must “die with Jesus on the cross.” When a sinner dies with Jesus, he is reborn with a spiritual body by the power of his Holy Spirit. Those who are born again with a spiritual body are saved.