The Word Is The Seed (Part 2).
“On the same day, when evening had come, He said to them, “Let us cross over to the other side.” (Mk 4:35; emp added). It is significant to know it was the same day that Jesus taught the parables of the Kingdom and how the Word is like a seed. The Lord had been teaching them the whole day about the power of the Word and how to hold on to it to see the power in it. He said, “Let us cross over to the other side.” He didn’t say, “Let’s go and drown or if the wind gets bad, turn back to shore.” He said they should get to the other side, and He went to sleep, and when the storm came, they got upset and said, “Don’t you care that we perish?” We get to situations in our lives where it appears God is sleeping, and we yell at Him. “God, don’t You care that I don’t have money for my rent? God has provided everything we need, but we need to sow the Word in our hearts to harvest what is already on the inside.
“This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” (Jos 1:8). God gives us the promise, but we take the seed (promise) in our heart, produce and harvest it. We want God to do something for us, but He has already done them. His promises are yea and amen. (2 Cor 1:20). If God promises us something and we cannot identify its fruit in our lives, we have not held on to that promise well. For example, God promises healing, but all you see is sickness. Since God cannot lie, you will see results when you meditate on Bible verses about Healing, memorise, and walk with them.
The Lord told us how a man went out to sow in Mark 4:3-8. In those days, they didn’t plant the way we do. They didn’t make furrows and spaced them for maximum growth. They just walked with a bag, picked a handful, and threw them on the floor. They will land in different places; only those on good soil produced some fruits, but the rest wasted. The Parable was that a man threw seeds, and they landed on four different types of ground.
The first soil was the pathway. This was where people walked, so when the seed got there, people walked over them, the ground got hardened that the seed could not penetrate below the ground, so the birds of the air came and ate them immediately.
The second type of ground was where the seed did go into the dirt, but there were stones in the ground, so it didn’t have any depth in the earth to grow, so it just withered and vanished away.
The third type of ground had plenty of room for roots, but then other things grew up like thorns and briars, so it choked the seeds and didn’t bring forth whole fruit.
The last type of ground was the best one, carrying 30, 60 and 100-fold.
The disciples came to Him and asked, “Why do you talk to the people in parables?” It is essential to understand that the Lord didn’t hide the Parable from us, but He hid it for us. It takes spiritual revelation to get the Word of God. So many people study the Word, but it is meaningless because they read it with their brains, not with their hearts. The Word of God isn’t written to your head, it is written to your heart, but you must use your head to get it to your heart. I am not saying it is mindless that you don’t think about it, but your heart gives the revelation, and you’ve got to open your heart and ask God to provide you with the revelation.
Jesus taught them this Parable and some of the greatest truths in the Word of God, but it is meaningless to people unless you open your heart and allow the Holy Spirit to inspire you. 1 Corinthians 2:14 says, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” It would help if you discerned this spiritually. You do this when you have the Holy Spirit living inside you and when you have been baptised by Him and speak in tongues. We get a revelation of the Word and strengthen our spirits in this. To understand and perceive things correctly, you must have the Holy Spirit baptism. Without the Holy Spirit, you cannot perceive the Word of God.
According to God’s Word, when we need money, we must give the little we have to get more, but that is counter-intuitive. It goes against how we think, but the way to increase is to give some away, which is how the Kingdom operates. The way up is to go down. You humble yourself; then God will exalt and lift you. The Kingdom of God works nearly backwards from the system of this world. You need the Holy Spirit to help you figure these things out; you cannot do it with your peanut brain. Verse 13 says, “And He said to them, “Do you not understand this Parable? How then will you understand all the parables?” This verse says that if you don’t understand the Parable of the Sower sowing the seed, you cannot understand any parable. This is the key to understanding all other parables. It is like the Rosetta Stone used to decipher the ancient Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt to write the Egyptian language. Since it was a dead language, nobody could read it, so nobody could understand it for years and years until the Rosetta Stone was discovered. It had three languages: Demotic, hieroglyphic and ancient Greek. They could understand demotic and ancient Greek but didn’t understand hieroglyphs, so it was with those two languages that they broke the code for hieroglyphs. All ancient Egyptian languages can be understood now through the Rosette Stone. Jesus says this Parable is the key to understanding the rest of the parables. If you can understand the teaching of this Parable, you can understand all the other parables.
This Parable should be the focal point and become the foundation of your Christian journey because the Word, not the person, produces fruit. It is not you who is fruitful; it is the Word of God that has the miracle in it to produce fruits. All you do is to supply the Word a place to dwell. It is very significant because it doesn’t matter your colour, race, height, gender or social position. You can know the Word as much as anybody else. All you need is the ability to read and understand. If you can read, you have the potential in you to become a mighty man or woman of God because the miracle is in the Word, not you. Take away charisma, talks, looks, height, accent, and any other limitations and focus on the Word. The emphasis is the Word, nothing else. You don’t have to be the sharpest knife in the drawer for God to use you. All you need is to have the Word in you. Take the Word in your heart and speak it from your mouth because it will change people.
You can also notice that only one was fertile out of the four types of soil. This means one-fourth, or 25%, stood out among the lot. There is a statistic that one out of four or 25% out of the Christian population does all the ministry work; the rest do nothing.
Satan is fighting the Word; he is not fighting you. He doesn’t want the Word to get inside you. You are not the potential problem to Satan; it is the Word that he doesn’t want to get into you. He can handle any of your charisma, career, education, fame, or every talent you think you have. He doesn’t have a problem with the money you have; his primary concern is to stop the Word from entering you because it has the potential of causing damage to his kingdom. Your natural talents will fail, but the Word in your life is what will change people. The good ground that brought 30, 60 and 100-fold was the type that had less. It had fewer stones, less packed down earth, and fewer weeds. So, if you want to be fruitful, don’t worry about becoming more; you can be less. Reduce the amount of junk you take inside you, and you will see the glory of God inside you. If you don’t feel qualified, you are hired because such are those that God desires to use.
In today’s church, the focus is on mannerisms, how people dress, and why people shouldn’t wear makeup or particular shoes; we focus on the external things. We should get back to the Word of God because that is what will change people, not too much talk. Comedians are now invited to church to entertain us, but that is ungodly. I would never put a comedian on my pulpit to give you 30 to one hour of laughter.
Verse 15 says, “And these are the ones by the wayside where the Word is sown. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the Word that was sown in their hearts.” Matthew puts it differently: “When anyone hears the Word of the Kingdom and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside.” (Matt 13:19). The first type of ground is where the Word couldn’t penetrate. They didn’t understand the Word. You’ve got to understand the Word, making it pass your brain down to the inside of you. It is not just thinking about it but having a deep thought. They can hear a pastor preach and enjoy the sermon, but that is it. We do not take notes and meditate on what we listen to bear fruit. When you get a revelation through the Word, meditate and let it sink deep down until it becomes a part of you. Otherwise, Satan will steal it. Satan can steal the Word because it lays on the surface; it never went deep inside them; they didn’t swallow the Word, so Satan took it from them.
There are stages we all go through. We first hear the Word, and it becomes a piece of information to us, not taking it anywhere. As we listen to it and understand it, we move to the second type of soil. Whenever you read the Bible, ask God for more profound meaning and search for other versions of the Bible to understand it. Otherwise, Satan will take the Word from you. The Spirit is there to teach us or give us a revelation of what we heard. You must pray and invite the Holy Spirit to reveal it to your heart so you can go past information to revelation. It is not a matter of reading volumes but understanding them. Sometimes it can be a struggle if you don’t plan. Generally, I make sure to read through the Bible every year. If you spend an hour a day, you will read about ten chapters, and if you follow that, you can easily read through it for a year. At the same time, I do a proper study of the entire Bible which demands a lot of time. I can spend hours on a few verses because I meditate on them throughout the day. Memorising the Scriptures is also time-consuming, but it is better to memorise them than to read the lives of celebrities you don’t know personally.
