The previous article addressed the reality that the results of our efforts may not always “land” where we thought they would, but God is never surprised (and He never has to adjust His plans). Let’s take a second look at the same passage, and ensure that we appreciate what Jesus said before we get to the explanation (from Him, by the way…not from me).
“Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.”
Mark 4:3-8 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/mrk.4.3-8.NIV
Here, Jesus described four types of soils where the farmer’s seed landed.
The seed that fell “beside the road” [NASB] or “along the path” [NIV] didn’t have much of a chance. For one thing, just like fields and gardens today, the ground probably wasn’t cultivated all the way up to the road. And, if the paths in Galilee were anything like those that my wife and I have hiked on, they would not only be fairly well-travelled and packed down (making it hard for the seeds to get into the soil), but even the edges would sometimes get walked on (like when the middle of the trail gets muddy, and the edges are the only places that aren’t squishy or full of puddles).
And, maybe the birds were already frequenting the paths, in case someone dropped a little of their lunch or the core of their fruit. Regardless, seeds that fell by the path were easy pickings. Where they landed, whether or not they could have taken root, they never made it that far!
For the seed that fell on rocky ground, I think about the mortar lines in a sidewalk. Maybe there’s a little dirt collected there, and a little weed might catch a break and produce a little green at our feet, but there’s no way you could grow a full-size stalk of wheat or corn in that shallow groove. My wife has to accommodate this limitation regularly, taking potted plants whose roots have filled their available space and repotting them into something larger, so that they can grow bigger.
Have you ever watched a seed grow? Maybe you had a science kit that sandwiched some dirt in a narrow plastic frame, or just put some seeds on a wet paper towel. The nourishment from the seed itself can last a while, letting the roots go out and start to pull in nutrition from the soil. Only after a little while does anything make it past the top of the dirt. In fact, some seeds are planted pretty deep, and have to work just to reach the surface. When there’s no significant depth of soil, though, the only way to go is up, I guess. Skipping steps (like having a good root system) isn’t trivial, though. Not having good roots might lead to a quick sprout but, in this parable, the plants that grew from these quick-sprouting seeds died off when things got too hot.
For the seed that fell among thorns…well, those of us who have gardened know that weeds usually seem heartier and stronger than plants we’re trying to grow. After all, if the good plants always won, I suppose we wouldn’t have to weed. Can you imagine that: just planting your favorite flowers or crops, and watching them choke out the weeds? Maybe that’s what the Garden of Eden was like, before the ground was cursed because of Adam’s sin; or, maybe it just didn’t have weeds in the first place.
Even if our plants could grow along with the weeds, though (maybe because they got a head-start), weeds steal water and nutrients, reducing what is available to the plants we want to grow. It doesn’t sound like the plants growing from the seeds among thorns necessarily died off; the main problem was that they didn’t produce any of the desired crop.
Regardless of the reasons, though, the net result for each of these first three groups of seeds (based upon where they landed) was the same at harvest time: dead or alive, none of them produced the desired result.
In the fourth type of soil, though (the “good soil”), the seeds produced excellent results. Now, I grew up near the Mississippi River, where we typically had 18 inches of black dirt that you could grow almost anything in. I got spoiled, since this “Mississippi mud” was so fertile that plants could easily grow, even with minimal effort. (And, as a kid, I was definitely into minimal effort, since most of my gardening efforts were mandated by my parents!)
I hope that you’ve read the whole chapter of Mark 4 to learn what happened next, but here on this site, we’ll wait for the next article to “dig into it” further.
From Sunday School lesson prepared for September 21, 2025
References:
- Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
- Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. Copyright by The Lockman Foundation.
- The College Press NIV Commentary – Mark, by Allen Black. © 1995 College Press Publishing Co.
Those Who Sin Differently 