Sermon text: Matthew 13:1–9, 18–23
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
One of the greatest Christian missionaries of all time is not widely known. I’ve mentioned him previously in a sermon about five, six years ago. He’s notable to us because he was a German Lutheran man, Ludwig Ingwer Nommensen, and he came from a small island off of Denmark.
In 1862, he was sent by the Rhenish Mission Society from Barmen, Germany, to Sumatra, Indonesia. For several decades, he faithfully sowed the seed of the gospel of Jesus Christ among the Batak tribes in Sumatra. Frequently, he had to preach and speak and live the gospel in the face of very hostile opposition.
It was three years before there was any discernible result from his preaching. And that result, some might say, was minuscule. It came in the form of one single baptism. It took even more years for any notable, noticeable progress to be made in converting the local Batak people.
Nommensen’s work was hindered by local political problems, with the Batak king and tribal leaders who were waging war on Dutch settlers. In 1878, he completed his first translation of the New Testament into the Batak language. He continued his work in the face of difficulties over many years that finally ended with his death at the age of 84.
At the time of his death in 1918, he left behind 180,000 Batak Lutherans who were the direct fruit of this one Christian missionary’s preaching, teaching, and translation of the Scriptures — all that over a 50-year period of time. The Batak Lutheran church today is a thriving Asian Lutheran church, the largest denomination among the Batak people of North Sumatra, Indonesia, with a membership of 6,500,000 members worldwide in 2024 — all from one missionary who began his work faithfully and diligently and against all odds, continually. Many of the postgraduate students of the Batak community attend the Australian Lutheran College in Adelaide, Australia.
But crowds don’t guarantee anything. Throughout chapters 12 and 13 of the Gospel of Matthew, crowds gathered continually to hear and to see Jesus, and many of them were very friendly to Him. Chapter 12 is the chapter that tells us that the leaders of the Hebrew people at the time called Jesus by the name Beelzebub — it’s another name for the devil. Still, the crowds grew and became larger and larger.
So Jesus went to a nearby beach, got into a little boat, went a little ways off the shore so the people could see and hear Him. And there He began to preach. But as He preached, He saw something too. As He stood in the boat and looked upon the people on the shore, He saw the visible church. He saw a congregation in which, as the Lutheran confessions teach, were present both hypocrites and true believers. He sees, in the language of the parable, four different kinds of soils, and He seems prompted to tell a series of three parables: the parable of the sower, the parable of the weeds, and the parable of the hidden treasure.
Chapter 13 begins: “That day Jesus went out from the house and was sitting by the sea.” Matthew begins with the phrase “that day” to show a connection between what happens in chapter 13, which is largely a reception of the gospel, and what happened in chapter 12, which was largely a rejection of Jesus Christ. In chapter 12, Jesus experienced the unbelief of the various groups within the crowd, open hostility by some of the leaders of the Jewish people.
In response, Jesus taught the crowd that His disciples are His true family. And they are family precisely because they listen to the word of God and do the will of the heavenly Father. Jesus tells them the parable of the sower to teach them about the seed and the sower. And He tells the parable as a warning to Christians in the crowd. He said, “Behold, the sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up. Others fell on rocky places, and they did not have much soil. And so immediately they sprang up, but because they had no depth of soil, when the sun had risen, they were scorched, and because they had no root, they withered away. Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out. And others fell on good soil and yielded crops: some 100-fold, some 60, some 30.”
There’s a wonderful irony in Jesus telling the story of this parable. He is in fact the Sower of the seed. He is the one preaching. We who stand in pulpits, we are mere vessels for His word. He is the one preaching. He’s the one speaking. He’s the one teaching God’s word to the crowd and to congregations this morning who hear the parable.
He speaks, and the seeds of His word fall upon different kinds of soil — that is, different kinds of people. But Jesus is not only the Sower; He’s also the Seed. The promised seed of Genesis 3:15. There Jesus tells the devil, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed.” The seed is the word of God. And Jesus is the word of God, the seed made flesh.
And so He speaks the parable. As He speaks the parable, He’s actually acting out the parable. He’s casting the seed among the congregation. He’s sowing the seed right then and there. He continues to sow the seed today, in the here and now. He is doing it through the written word, the read word, the preached word, the sung word in this church service. The seeds are falling all about you.
Now, when you hear the parables — in particular the one for us today — it’s tempting to think of all those people that fit the fact pattern: whose faith is strangled out, whose depth of soil is too shallow, who do not understand what the message is, what it means for them. We all know that most people aren’t in church this morning, but we are. They didn’t hear the gospel lesson read, but we did.
Jesus was speaking to church people then, and He’s speaking to church people now, as Jesus sows His seed, which is the word that comes through every aspect of a liturgical church service: the hymns, the prayers, the liturgies, the readings, the sermon. Don’t just think of the crowds 2,000 years ago. Think of this crowd today — you, sitting in the pew. Many of us actually listen to the Old Testament lesson, the Epistle, and the Gospel, but our attention is shallow and infrequent.
How many of us actually listen and take seriously the liturgy, the prayers, the lyrics of the hymns? We’re known for a church that sings hard hymns, and we do, but that’s because the words are worth the melody.
According to the parable, many of the people who once heard the gospel did not bear fruit. Jesus attributes the failure to receive and to live in the gospel to three sets of circumstances. The first: when a person hears the word and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown. In the parable, this is the one on whom the seed was sown beside the road, which the birds pecked up.
Christians, you see, are supposed to know something about history — church history, the history of the word of God. They’re supposed to know something about theology. They’re supposed to know something about kindness and Christian virtues. The more we understand, the deeper the roots of our faith, and the harder it is to lose that faith.
The person who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy but has no firm root immediately falls away because of affliction or persecution, and is likened in this parable to the soil along rocky places. These people lack understanding and depth, so that they walk away from Christ because they do not understand that the Christian faith is a theology of the cross — one of suffering, devotion, humility, and kindness — not one of glory and popularity and wealth. To take up one’s cross and follow Jesus means a life of humility, service to the neighbor, and suffering for doing what’s right. And most people did not sign up for such a life.
Number three: the one who hears the word, but the worries of the world and wealth choke it out, is likened to the soil where the seed fell among the thorns and was choked out. This person is one who is so worldly minded there isn’t room for spiritual matters. They are animated by base needs, worldly wealth, entertainment, spite, sports, and the like. They work on the pleasure principle, not on the fidelity principle.
So what happens when you hear the word of God spoken and prayed for and preached and sung in this church service? Are you tuned in or are you tuned out? Does it sharpen your thinking and help your understanding? Does it tame your tongue and your temper? Does it cause you to say or do things for others? Are you more gracious toward others, or do you complain about this thing or that thing? Do you sow the seeds of God’s word among your family and friends, or write them off as rocky ground?
The problem, you see, isn’t just the diehard unbelievers who think and act like diehard unbelievers and immoral reprobates. We have our own trouble growing and maturing in the Christian faith because we are shallow soil too. Maybe, like me, you recognize the bad soil Jesus profiles in the parable in your own life. The truth is, as sinners we are a composite of all those kinds of soil, a mixture of all three.
We are the hardened, trodden-down path, where when the seed is sown on it, it simply bounces off and scatters. We hear the gospel but make little impression upon us beyond the moment. We think of it as data, little more than platitudes. Then there’s the stony-ground reception of the word. We hear it. It germinates. We understand the gospel message of forgiveness. But its roots have not anchored themselves deep within the soil. The gospel does not change our thinking. It does not influence our conscience. It does not transform our underlying values. So when life gets difficult, its shallow roots wither away.
Next came the thorn-infested soil. We may hear and understand what God says. It may take root in some way, but the competition for this space is too strong. Our worries about this life — our families, our property, our goods, earthly security — all crowd in, and the word is choked out. We have trouble believing God’s promises concerning our daily bread and daily life.
Jesus’s words in the first part of the parable reveal our own spiritual dryness, hardness, and slowness to hear and to believe. And even though Jesus talks a lot about soil in this parable, the true centerpiece of the parable is the Sower and the seed. The Sower knowingly throws most of His seed into arid parts of the field. And much less seed ends up on the good soil. Still, the Sower holds back nothing. He spreads His seed generously, and in places where it will not be well received. He spreads His seed far and wide because Christ died for all, including those who reject Him. The sins of the whole world have been paid for in Christ Jesus. And heaven is open to all who believe — all who sink their roots into deep soil and prevail.
The Sower of this parable knows more than we do. He knows that God’s word never goes out empty, but always returns full, accomplishing the purpose for which it was sent. Even if it looks hopeless to the human eye, it produces the fruit He intends. The Sower still sows the gospel of salvation and goes on sowing in the soil of His church and this world, both good and bad — even in you, with our rocky, weed-infested hearts. The Sower knows where His seed lands. And day by day, Sunday by Sunday, the same life-giving seed continues to be sown in our lives through His Word and Sacrament ministry: the word of forgiveness and salvation through Jesus Christ, the gospel seed that even changes rocky soil and often softens human hearts.
The church, for all of its soil problems, is the living, fruit-bearing work of the Son, Jesus Christ. The seed is producing its increase. It’s doing its work. It’s bearing fruit — some 100-fold, some 60, some 30. But you who hear these words and believe and trust in Christ: you are the fruit of His labor. And you have the forgiveness of sins. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus our Lord.