A story about four soils

In eighteenth century England, jealous religious leaders forced out of the churches the two great preachers of the day: John Wesley and George Whitefield. So they preached outside where they attracted enormous crowds.

That is what was happening to Jesus here. He leaves the synagogue to preach beside the lake. I have been to that area and seen the paths made flat by many feet, the plants that have died because there was no depth of earth, the grain hidden by weeds, along with some that was growing well.

By describing this great story of the four soils, which they could see around them, Jesus is doing two things. One, he is explaining the different reactions to his own work of bringing in God’s kingdom. Some, like the religious leaders, reject him. Some, like different people in the crowd, respond but then nothing continues. Others have too many things happening in their lives.

But some allow the message to affect their lives, and they develop into real leaders.

The second thing he is doing is putting a mirror in front of his hearers – and us. Do we let his message bounce off us like seeds bounce off a well-used path? Did we once respond to Jesus but the relationship never grew?

Have we allowed the life-giving seed of Jesus’ good news to be squeezed out by our work, our pleasures and our worries? Or is the combination of seed and soil, message and response, producing good fruit in our lives?