The Ministry of the Word (Ministerium Verbi) is the appropriate phrase for our little gallery below: Pic #1 is Sowing the Seed: Scene from the Parable of the Sower from the Illustrations for Bible Stories (Religion Tract Society c.1890);
Pic #2 was a common thing between OSU's Woody Hayes and an official, illustrating "those on the wayside" as Woody's words go in one ear of the referee and out the other;
Pic #3 portrays the Law preparation (harrowing) of the ground in order that it might receive the Gospel Word;
and, Pic #4 shows that the ministry of God's Word may be efficacious, not only among the hearers but even among te youngest readers of the Living Voice of God.
This brings me to this morning's address:
“Sowing the Word of God” (Read Luke 8:4-15) Luke 8:11-15 NKJV
Luke 8:11 “Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. 12 Those by the wayside are the ones who hear; then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. 13 But the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, who believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. 14 Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity. 15 But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.” NKJV
My Christian friends: As I have mentioned before, concerning the office of the public ministry and the work of the church, the usual imagery that is talked about is shepherds and sheep. The word pastor itself means shepherd and comes from the Latin meaning “to feed.” But now, Jesus uses a different picture. This imagery He now uses is of the pastor as a farmer; one who is a sower of seeds throughout the world.
The best sower possible is Jesus the Word Incarnate. Jesus, if He were just an ordinary preacher, might have said to His disciples, “Look here, I have come to save the world and already the effects are so great that the floodgates of people’s hearts are opened wide and eagerly receive My words!” But this was to be to the contrary to the actual effect. So, then. what comes forth from Jesus’ very mouth is the hard parable of the sower and the seed. It is especially this parable that shows the fate that awaits the Word of God in a land of famine. We are therefore talking today about preaching (the ministry of the Word) and planting.
The poet, Robert Frost, penned “The Strong Are Saying Nothing.” The opening line is apropos for today’s text:
The soil gets a rumpling soft and damp,
And small regard to the future of the weed.
The final flat of the hoe’s approval stamp
Is reserved for the bed of a few selected seed.
The Lord breaks up the soil of man’s heart with the hard plow of His Law. God Himself prepares the soil to receive the seed of the Gospel message so that man might become a fruitful harvest. In this seed is the germination of what we call faith. Such faith weathers the storms of life only by discerning God’s will and only by trusting in God’s providential care.
Jesus knew that many of the people gathered at the Sea of Galilee merely admired Him for His parabolic style of preaching and for the many miracles He worked. He knew that many might have just wanted to hear something new talked about without taking to heart what was being said, much like today when people flock to hear exciting television preachers with no thought that they must repent and receive Christ by faith and faith alone; and Jesus knew these people who would not receive His message of salvation were losing their souls and entering into eternal perdition. Jesus, therefore, interprets the parable of the sower for us saying that it was to both reveal and to conceal the truth: It was to reveal truth to those who desperately sought it, and to conceal the truth from those who so earnestly despised it. As our Lord said, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, that ‘seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.’”
So just what is so hard to understand about this parable? It is the fact that the sower sows the seed in places that just doesn’t make sense. It’s a poor use of resources, to pass out the Word of God upon places and people that will never hear to understand it. Sow it where it will matter, we might say. Sow the seed of the Word where there are good hearts and a fertile soil for growth. Did not Jesus talk about throwing your pearls before swine? Was it not Jesus who said in Matthew 7:6, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you”?
Dr. Luther says about the ones along the wayside: “The first group are those who have heard the Word, but do not really understand it. These are not the bad people on this earth but the greatest, cleverest, holiest, and also the largest group…They also want to be regarded among “the first” and live among us in the Christian congregation and partake with us of Baptism and the Sacrament. But their hearts are carnal and remain so. They do not absorb the Word; it goes in one ear and out the other. The seed on the path does not penetrate but lies on the top of the path; for the path is beaten down hard by the feet of men and beasts.”
If you were the owner of this farmland you would have told the sower to only dispense the seed where you were sure it would have a chance of growing. You might say, “Follow the science!” You might take soil samples, sowing surveys, and get everything nicely and carefully into neat little rows: That makes much sense to those who “follow the science.”
But that is not how the parable is explained. In this parable, the sower tosses the seed out like it is free, which, in fact it is; and, he doesn’t give any consideration where it falls. In other words, he is a careless farmer. He sows not caring that there may be a famine in the land, a famine of the Word of God, but caring only that there may still be people who might be receptive to the Word.
Now this is what really makes many uncomfortable about this parable: When you hear this parable, your natural response is going to be something along the lines of “thank God that I am good ground, and not a thorny mess like everyone else.” Basically, this is how Pharisees are when it comes to the spiritual understanding of the Gospel.
The point of this parable is that God’s Word goes out into the whole world; God’s Word goes out to all, just like God’s mercy goes out to all. No one is excluded from the great work of God in bringing salvation and eternal life to the world. But there is even more in this gift that God gives to us: For Christ Himself is the seed in this parable. Jesus once said of Himself, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.” Jesus is the Seed, promised to Eve so many years ago. “I will put enmity between your seed and her seed...” so God said to Satan in the Garden.
The sower has many paths used to travel to and from places in his field. The path is beaten down, hard and smooth. These paths are intended for the sower to travel in his field; it has not been turned over, or plowed, by the Law of God. Nevertheless, still some seed fall upon it whereupon Satan, who is represented by the birds in the parable, eats up the seed as it lies on the top of the hardened surface. Because of man’s natural resistance to anything spiritually good, he too cannot have understanding. For the Law must break up the ground in preparation to receive the Gospel Word, namely, the forgiveness of sins.
In addressing Law and Gospel, Article IV on Justification, in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, reads: “But to believe is to trust in the merits of Christ that for his sake God certainly wishes to be reconciled with us. Likewise, just as we ought to maintain that, apart from the law, the promise of Christ is necessary, so also is it needful to maintain that faith justifies. For the law does not teach the free forgiveness of sin. For the law cannot be performed unless the Holy Ghost is first received. It is, therefore, needful to maintain that the promise of Christ is necessary. But this cannot be received except by faith therefore those who deny that faith justifies teach nothing but the law both Christ and the gospel being set aside.”
Friend, Christ Jesus is the Seed who was crucified on the hard and rocky soil of Golgotha. He is the One who bore the heat of the day, the heat of God the Father’s wrath for your sin. He is the one who bore the insults, the derision, the constant plotting and sneaking about of those who sought to destroy him like vultures swooping down upon their prey when it is dying. This is Jesus, my friend, who bore all things and endured all things for you.
The pastor is not to be concerned with whether or not God’s Word is to take root; he is rather called to disseminate the Word of God, casting it here and there only trusting that God’s Word, as He says, will be efficacious. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8 9), and also, Isaiah 55:10 11, “For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”
Still other seed, Jesus explains, “fell upon a rock” where the soil is very shallow. It is a fact that in Palestine, rocky ground usually had a layer of soil only an inch or two deep at the most. The seed would spring up quickly because the soil was warmed just as quickly by the sun, but it also dried up quickly because its roots were very shallow and couldn’t obtain the necessary moisture. This explains those Christians who are the most excitable. The adrenaline rush of the novice Christian who joyfully displays his conversion “experience” and receives God’s Word is truly amazing. He quickly exclaims how much his life has changed and is just as quick to give great testimonies for God. But then it is just as amazing to see an abrupt end to such enthusiasm because his knowledge of salvation doesn’t grow, and his faith soon dries up. This is most notable when the roots aren’t given the constancy of Word and Sacrament. It should not be surprising then that confessional Christianity doesn’t have great growth rates. Bible study rightly dividing both Law and Gospel; and Christ-centered public worship has no appeal to the human flesh as does the entertainment and man-centered fun worship services of the churches of today.
America, with its great abundance, is dying for lack of the true Word of God for which there is a spiritual famine that kills eternally. God has sent a famine of His Word, as prophesied in Amos 8:11-13, today throughout the world. Christians don’t understand the significance of why churches preach only good news and fluffiness, while the Word, the entire counsel of God, Law as well as Gospel, is missing. People have no use for the Gospel truths, those old certainties, anymore because they don’t want to admit that they are sinners, deserving the wrath of God, and if perchance God’s wrath should come their way the earthly government will come to save them and make all things right.
Finally, for those of us who have been Christians for many years after our baptisms, we may not like to think of ourselves as being thorny soil; however, in this world we often play the part. Here, Jesus directs our attention to the fields of Palestine where thorns were an after growth of thistles which grow abundantly in every wheat field. They grow more rapidly than the seed of grain; absorb most of the moisture and nutrients of the soil; and will eventually shade even the wheat from the sun itself. So it is with us that the worldly concerns can choke out the very desire we once had for the Word of God. We most certainly can become so involved in daily mundane things, such as making a living and taking care of our bodies, even in these days of a pandemic, that we ignore our souls and their spiritual needs, even our eternal lives are forgotten.
You cannot save yourself, and you cannot escape the cares of this day, even some distractions may take your attention away from this very sermon. You cannot do it, and any thought that you are so much better is just so much foolishness on your part. But our gracious God is the One who grows the most miraculous crops in the most unusual of places. He has grown a crop of salvation in your once heart of stone; hard, distracted and bird-plucked as it once was. God, who created all by the Word of His mouth, has created faith in you by the power of His Word.
Now here is a miracle that is worth remembering: God has watered that seed of faith, that seed is Christ in you. He has watered it with Baptism, and He gives it the finest of nutrients in His own body and blood in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. He also gives you sunlight, the bright Sun of suffering, so that you may grow in faith. He knows however, as Jesus is the Master Farmer, how much heat of suffering you can bear, and He gives you no more than you are able to receive so that you may continue to grow.
So, the preacher, the sower is to be careless but faithful in disseminating God’s Word. Martin Franzmann wrote in our hymn for today: “Preach you the Word and plant it home; To men who like or like it not. The Word shall still endure and stand when flowers and men shall be forgot.” And his last verse gives us great assurance: “Preach you the Word and plant it home and never faint; The Harvest Lord who gave the sower seed to sow will watch and tend His planted Word.” Amen.
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