Maybe you know a missionary couple who have toiled for decades in a far away country and ended up with precious little to show for their labors.
You know them to be be hard working and faithful in their efforts to evangelize the gospel. They've preached faithfully and passionately for years but hardly anyone came to hear and even fewer gave their lives to Christ.
Some church people will think such a couple could have spent their lives in more productive places. With few results to show for their efforts, many will say they were wasting valuable time and they could have moved on to another, more fruitful field. For a dedicated couple in lifelong mission work, “each day” of their lives is a day of renewal and hopeful expectation for the people they minister to... that today, or tomorrow, or the next day will be the day they accept Jesus as Savior.
What would say to such a missionary couple? What would you tell them to do? All Christians are evangelists and missionaries. There is no “observer” section in this stadium, we are all on the field charged with preaching the gospel. How are we as ambassadors of Christ to take His gospel to the world? Just how and where should we sow the seed of God's Word?
According to the gospels, the Parable of the Sower recorded in the synoptic gospels at Mark 4:1-20, Matthew 13:1-23, and Luke 8:1-15 was an important story told by Jesus that defines our role and actions as His ambassadors.
Clearly at the time of the telling, like so many of Jesus parables, not everybody who heard it understood its meaning. Not even the apostles, whom we should view as the world's first missionaries understood its meaning. Like them, we tend to think this story is all about the different “soils.” There are different kinds of hearts who hear the gospel, Jesus explains, and the gospel grows best in fertile, receptive fields. So, as some have argued, this parable invites us to cast the seed of God's word on good soil... to preach the word to people who are most likely to be receptive and believe.
Church growth experts, church planters and missiologists say we should be looking for the most fruitful fields... places that are most likely to yield the best harvest, to give us the best return on our investment of kingdom resources. Sounds like a very sound strategy doesn’t it?
However, it is interesting to note that Jesus does not call this the “parable of the soils”. He calls it the “Parable of the Sower ”. Rather than just focusing on the different types of ground that receive the seed of the Word, Jesus invites us to pay special attention to the one who sows it.
When we do this we are confronted by a surprising, even somewhat scandalous perception. The sower is hardly a conventional farmer. Instead of carefully choosing only the best soil and meticulously preparing it for the planting process, the sower in the parable just randomly and recklessly begins to cast seed. Anywhere and everywhere. He casts it as if he had a never-ending supply, as if he didn't care where it fell. He casts it on the sidewalk, he casts it in the weed-infested vacant lot, he casts it in the sight of hungry birds. Now here’s the key to the parable... the sower does it intentionally, purposefully, knowing full well that most of his precious seed is falling on unreceptive soil. Who is this Sower and what it the world could he be thinking?
Ask any experienced farmer and they will tell you that no one would plant seed in that way. In the time of Jesus, seed was expensive and the pressure to produce a good harvest was great for these poor Judean families. Good seed should never be “wasted” on “bad soil” would have been the first reaction to hearing this parable by any Jewish farmer of that day. Probably a lot of head scratching was going on trying to figure out what Jesus was talking about. Most probably thought this “sower” to be a foolish farmer with little or no experience. But... is he?
Maybe the sower knows something about the seed and the soils that we simply have a hard time comprehending and accepting. Even today, with our sophisticated church planting and evangelical strategies, we often ignore an important aspect of what we’re doing and for whom we are doing it. The power of God, the power of the gospel message and the hearts of men can coalesce to overpower any of our slick strategies and techniques.
Conventional farming, the kind that we are inclined to do, saves the seed for the best fields–-the good, receptive soil that promises to yield the biggest crop. But it seems that in kingdom planting the seed is extravagantly scattered on everyone, regardless of how shallow, hard or weed-infested the recipient lives may be. In conventional farming the soil is carefully selected and cultivated using the best, most proven methods to guarantee a harvest. But in kingdom farming the sowing is done with loving, non-discriminating abandon, knowing that the harvest is guaranteed by a God who promised that his word would not return to him empty. (Isaiah 55:11)
When we understand this, our evangelism is driven by a totally new and different dynamic. Rather than depending upon ourselves and the genius of our own strategies, we learn to depend upon our God and the irrevocable guarantee of his promises.
Rather than worrying about being successful and living up to human expectations, we are free to be sacrificial and thereby meet the expectations of God. Rather than deferring to the path of least resistance, we are free to pursue the path of the greatest need. Rather than focusing on where we can find the most good, we can focus on where we can do the most good.
It's not easy sowing seed on hard soil. That's why so few people attempt it today. It's risky business for churches to support such ventures. Those who are willing to do it are often misunderstood and even criticized, most of that criticism ironically coming from within the body or community of Christ they depend on for support and encouragement. Supporters want to see results... souls saved. The visible indicators expressed in a growing number of baptisms, year after year. Mission minded Christians after all, should go where the opportunities are and stay away from hard soil. We are concerned about how we look to the watching world. It's hard to look “holy” when you are up to your elbows in hard soil–rubbing shoulders with people living in sin who care for nothing about Jesus and the Gospel. Good people, holy people, just don't hang out with folk like that. This might sound harsh and critical, but one only needs to look at the work of evangelism in the world today to see such attitudes.
By now you might be thinking, “How idealistic, how wonderfully theoretical. But it just doesn't work like that in the real world.” Are you certain about that... or have you forgotten the stories from the Bible? Oh, and don’t forget Church History. Some of the gospel's greatest harvests have come out of the hardest, most unreceptive soil.
We know ONE who trusted that seed cast anywhere and everywhere would produce fruit. Jesus, the Christ. He was the holiest person who ever lived. In fact this Sower went out of his way to sow seed on hard soil and in the process showed us what true holiness is... not the holiness of religious propriety, but the holiness of unqualified devotion to God's calling and unconditional love for all people. Even Jesus trusted in God the Father to bring forth the harvest. He did... and He is.
And that's what evangelism is really all about. Missions is not about the good taking the gospel to the worthy. It is about the loving taking the gospel to the lost. The world will not be won by the holiness of the church. It will be won by the love of the church... the people of God willing to sow the seeds of truth anywhere and everywhere. It will be won when the church learns to love people like Jesus loved them, when like this Sower, we passionately cast the seed of God's word on all kinds of soil... all the time.
All the great missionaries, whose lives and ministries inspire us, understood this basic principle. They knew that there was no heart so hard, no culture so resistant that it could not be penetrated by the supernatural seed of God's word. So rather than avoiding hard soil, they sought it out and spent their lives casting seed. It’s a really good thing to think and act like an unconventional sower. There are no boundaries, no barriers, no resistance that should ever hold us back from casting the seeds of salvation to a lost and suffering world. Our job is to sow the seed. God will make it grow and bear fruit.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life.”
He who has ears, let him hear.
