Jesus is continuing on explaining how the Spirit draws us to King Jesus in repentance and faith so that we throw ourselves at His mercy as our Savior, we pour out our worship on Him as our God, and we kneel at His throne as our King.
And when we do that, we are adopted into God’s family, and we are made into citizens of His kingdom as His people under His covenant.
And so, in Matthew 13, Jesus is going to lay out even more what it looks like to be His kingdom people. He is going to lay out even more clearly what it looks like when the Spirit draws us to Jesus, breaks through the icy walls of our hearts, and grips us and transforms us in faith and repentance.
The Parable of the Soils
Jesus uses a really fascinating example here in Matthew 13. This is a really famous story that He tells.
He illustrates the way that the Spirit works to bring us into God’s kingdom rest through Jesus. He says that the Spirit sows the seed of faith on the soil of our hearts.
This is called the parable of the soils.
Jesus tells the story of the four soils. He says that someone went out to sow the seeds, to go plant the seeds for his crops one day, and he threw it on four different types of soil as he was going.
First, he threw the seed out on the pavement, and it just kind of got picked up by the birds and taken away.
Then he threw the seed onto rocky soil, but it was so shallow that the sun immediately baked it, and it had no roots. It wasn’t able to get enough moisture to sustain itself.
He threw some seed onto thorny soil, and things started to grow, but they got suffocated by all the weeds and the thorns and everything.
But then he threw some of his seed onto fertile soil, good soil, and that seed took root, and it started to multiply. It grew 30 times, 60 times, 100 times what was sown.
And He says this soil is like the human heart.
Four Kinds of Hearts
He says we are like soil.
You notice Jesus loves agriculture metaphors, right? In chapter 12, He said we are like trees. There are repentant trees that bear the fruit of repentance and faith in Jesus, and there are unrepentant trees that bear the fruit of faithlessness and rebellion, who reject Jesus.
He warns the Pharisees and the Sadducees that, at this moment, they are unrepentant trees, and if they want to enter God’s kingdom rest, they need to become repentant trees.
In the same way, He tells this story of the four soils, and He tells these Pharisees and Sadducees:
“Your hearts are like the pavement.”
He goes to Nazareth, which is His hometown, and He starts preaching and teaching there. He starts healing, doing exorcisms, performing miracles. He starts doing all the signs that show that He is the Savior and King and God that we have been waiting for forever, and yet their hearts are closed off towards Him.
They reject Him.
They say, “I remember when You were a little boy. We know this guy. There is no way this person is the Messiah. It cannot possibly be the little carpenter boy who grew up with the peasant family in Joseph’s household.”
They just can’t get their heads around that idea.
So their hearts are closed off towards Jesus. The Spirit is sowing the seed of faith in them, and yet they are rejecting the Spirit’s work. So, just like in chapter 12, just like those Pharisees and Sadducees, they are on the road to blaspheming the Spirit. They are rejecting His work and His testimony about Jesus.
So their hearts are closed off like the pavement.
Rocky Soil
Some people have hearts that are rocky or thorny.
Some people, like rocky soil, the seed kind of gets in, and it starts to take root, but their faith is shallow, so it never gets deep roots.
And as a result, they are very, very quickly rattled out of following Jesus.
The moment it becomes difficult, the moment there is persecution, the moment there are consequences, the moment the world starts treating them badly because they follow Jesus, they fall away quickly.
So many of the people who heard Jesus during His ministry were like that. They liked what they heard, but they were too scared to be persecuted by Rome, by the religious leadership in Israel, by others, by their families, to truly follow Him.
Thorny Soil
Some people, we have hearts like thorny soil, where the seed of faith begins to get in, it begins to take root, it begins to grow and bear fruit, but it’s a worldly faith.
We can’t drag ourselves away from our distractions. We can’t drag ourselves away from our temptations. And so, as a result, we never really bear genuine fruit.
We never really begin to follow Him seriously because our faith is just choked out by all the distractions and desires of this world.
Good Soil
But then there are some people who have hearts that are like good soil.
The Spirit sows the seeds of faith and repentance in it, and it takes root, and it causes us to start to become genuinely repentant, genuinely submissive to the Lord, genuinely sincere, earnest, desperate to follow Jesus.
Genuine faith begins to take root in us, and we start to bear fruit, and we start to obey, and we start to grow.
Jesus says:
“100% of My ministry, now and forever, is aimed at people whose hearts are like good soil.”
He says:
“You will never break through a person so long as their heart is like the pavement. You will never be able to get far with a person so long as their heart is like that rocky soil. You will never be able to get far with a person so long as their heart is like that thorny soil.”
And He says:
“Watch out that your heart is not like the pavement, so you reject Me; not like the rocky soil, so that you are easily discouraged from following Me when persecution comes; that it’s not like the thorny soil, so that you are easily drawn away by distractions from the world or temptations from the world.”
He says:
“Make sure your heart is like good soil.”
Why Jesus Teaches in Parables
And Jesus does something really strange.
He says because He’s looking for people whose hearts are like that good, good, fertile soil, He teaches and preaches in parables.
He tells stories.
He uses stories that do one of two things.
One, if your heart is like that good soil, these parables are going to make it easier to understand the message of Jesus. If your heart is like good soil, these parables are going to make it easier to understand God’s kingdom and what God’s kingdom is like and what God wants for us and from us.
Because if your heart is like good soil, when you hear these parables, what are you going to do?
You’re going to go figure out what they mean. You’re going to start asking questions. You’re going to start seeking answers. You’re going to start searching for wisdom. You are going to throw yourself into gaining understanding.
You’re going to be like the disciples who pulled Jesus aside and said, “Hey, I don’t know what the heck’s going on in that story about the soils. I don’t know what the heck is going on in that story about, you know, the guy who dug up some treasure. What is that about?”
And Jesus is going to explain it.
He says:
“I teach in parables so that it is hidden from the masses with pavement hearts, with rocky hearts, with thorny hearts, but it is revealed to those with good-soil hearts.”
The difference between the masses and the disciples is not that Jesus gave special favor to the disciples to explain things.
The difference is the masses heard His parables and said, “I don’t know what the heck that means,” and then walked away.
The disciples heard His parable and said, “I don’t think I understand that,” and they walked toward Him, and they sought understanding.
That is what you are doing right now as you read through God’s Word each day and then seek understanding. You are watching a 20- or 30- or sometimes 45-minute video trying to understand difficult parts of God’s Word.
That is a form of seeking. That is a form of looking for understanding and answers.
So you are doing right now what people with good-soil hearts do.
So Jesus teaches in parables as a way of drawing people with good-soil hearts further and further into learning and understanding and growing, but screening out people with pavement hearts, rocky hearts, thorny hearts.
Wheat and Weeds
So people with good-soil hearts start gathering around Him.
They start following.
Now He doesn’t just have 12 people following. Now He has 50. Now He has 100. Now He has 500 people following Him. Now sometimes He has thousands of people following Him because they want to know and understand and grow and follow Him and be His disciples and be His kingdom workers.
And so Jesus addresses these people with good-soil hearts, and He says:
“I need to warn you about something.”
He says:
“As My kingdom workers, you will always be surrounded by people who are opposed to My will and My ways. You will always be surrounded by people who attack you because of My will and My ways. You’re going to be surrounded by people who reject and persecute you because you are doing My kingdom work.”
He says we are like wheat and weeds.
Some people are like wheat. Some people are like weeds.
Some people are genuinely seeking to follow Me. Some people are genuinely seeking My will. Some people are genuinely coming after Me to grow and know Me and do My kingdom work.
But some people are opposed to Me.
He says:
“Watch out for the weeds. They will be here forever. They will be here until the day that I return to make all things right and destroy the forces of darkness and make the world good again.”
Good Fish and Rotten Fish
He says, in the same way, when you go fishing, there are good fish and there are bad fish.
There are fish you want to keep, and there are fish you throw out. There are good fish, and there are rotten fish. You have to throw out a large number of the fish that come in your net because they’ve been dead for a long time.
He says some people are like good fish.
Those are people with good-soil hearts. Those are people who hear My Word, are captivated by it, and start following after Me.
But some people are like rotten fish.
Those are people who hear My Word and reject it and oppose it and even persecute you for it.
Watch out for the rotten fish.
Watch out for the weeds.
He says:
“But don’t worry, because one day when I return to make everything right again, everyone who rejected and opposed and persecuted you because of Me will be destroyed along with the devil and the forces of darkness. So for now, you just focus on following Me.”
The Treasure and the Pearl
He says:
“When a person with a good-soil heart comes your way, you are going to proclaim the message of Jesus to them. You are going to tell them about My kingdom. You are going to tell them about My will and My ways. You are going to tell them about Me, and they are going to respond in faith and repentance.”
My Word is going to become like their treasure.
He says:
“When you meet a person with a good-soil heart and you proclaim the good news about Me to them, they’re going to be like a man who is working in a field and who finds a treasure buried there and is so captivated by this treasure that he goes and sells everything he owns so that he can buy the field and have the treasure.”
When you find someone with a good-soil heart, when you find someone who is wheat, not weeds, when you find someone who is like a good fish, not a rotten fish, you are going to proclaim the good news of Me to them, and they’re going to be like someone who finds a priceless pearl and goes and sells everything he has to get it.
They will give up everything that they have.
They will abandon everything.
They will throw away everything so that they can throw themselves into wholehearted pursuit of God and His kingdom, so that they can enter My kingdom rest.
He says that’s how all of this is going to go.
The Kingdom Will Grow
And He says:
“Listen, as you go out and you join the Spirit in casting the seed of the kingdom, the kingdom is going to radically multiply and expand.”
He says the Spirit is going to work through your preaching and teaching and proclaiming My good news.
The Spirit is going to work through you going out and being fishers of people.
The Spirit is going to work through you going out and being a harvester.
When you tell people the good news about Me, the Spirit is going to radically work in people’s hearts, transform them, make them into My people and My children and My disciples and citizens of My kingdom and workers for My kingdom.
And as a result, the kingdom is going to grow and expand.
The kingdom is going to be like a mustard seed that starts out small, so small you can barely even see it, but is going to grow into one of the largest trees in existence.
It’s going to be like yeast, which begins tiny but then spreads throughout 50 pounds of dough so that it takes over all of it.
As we go out and we proclaim the good news of Jesus as His kingdom workers, as His fishers for people, as His disciples, as His harvesters, the Spirit works through that to transform lives, pull people out of the pit, bring people to faith and repentance, bring them God’s kingdom rest.
He says despite all of the opposition, all of the persecution, all of the rejection, He is going to use our kingdom work for Him to gather people into God’s kingdom rest.
As members of His family, members of His covenant, children of the Father, we are gathering people into the people of God through our proclamation of the Gospel.
What Kind of Heart Do You Have?
But the question that we have to ask ourselves is: What kind of hearts do we have?
Do we have good-soil hearts, or do we have rocky hearts?
Do we have good-soil hearts, or do we have thorny hearts?
And the second question we need to ask ourselves is: Are we willing to go out and face the rejection, the disappointment, the opposition, sometimes even the persecution, that will come with being fishers of people, proclaiming the good news of Jesus?
Go out today and sow, plant the seeds of the good news of Jesus, and then watch the Spirit work in people’s hearts, break through people’s hearts, find the good soil, and then start sowing there.
Mount Zion Baptist Church - Louisburg, NC 
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