One of my favorite parables in the Bible is the parable of the sower found in Mark 4. This parable is foundational to understanding how the kingdom of God operates. In Mark 4:13 Jesus said if we don’t understand this parable, we cannot understand the rest of them. Wow! How powerful is that. It’s ironic because if I asked most people what the most important parable is, they’d say the prodigal son, good Samaritan, or the parable of the talents. Rarely do people say the parable of the sower. The parable of the sower is the most important parable, however, because it explains how God’s entire kingdom operates.
This parable defines God’s word as seed and then talks about four different types of soil in which the seed may land. These four types of soil are conditions of the human heart. You can learn more about the conditions of the heart in this article.
While I usually focus on improving the condition of our heart so we can receive, today I want to share a bigger reason many Christians do not receive from God. Many times we don’t receive because we don’t take the seed out of our seed-bag and cast it into the ground! The seed represents the promises of God. These promises don’t do us any good if we don’t pull them out of our Bibles and put them on lips and declare them out of our mouth. When we have need, God wants us to sow a seed!
Think about it, what did God do when Adam and Eve sinned? He sowed seed. Specifically, He prophesied Jesus while He was standing in the garden with Adam and Eve. Look at Genesis 3:14-15:
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent:
“Because you have done this,
You are cursed more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you shall go,
And you shall eat dust
All the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.”
Jesus was the seed who bruised Satan’s head. Now, let’s look at what Jesus did when had a need in His ministry? We are going to find that He sowed a seed? Look at Matthew 14:15-20:
15 When it was evening, His disciples came to Him, saying, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is already late. Send the multitudes away, that they may go into the villages and buy themselves food.”
16 But Jesus said to them, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
17 And they said to Him, “We have here only five loaves and two fish.”
18 He said, “Bring them here to Me.” 19 Then He commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass. And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes. 20 So they all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained.
Since the 5 loaves and 2 fish weren’t enough to feed the multitude, they weren’t the harvest. They were merely the seed. Jesus then used HIs words as seed by blessing the little bit of food He had in His hands until it was enough to feed a multitude of people. Again, we see the principle, when you have a need, sow a seed!
Years ago, our church went through a difficult financial season when we were believing God to remodel the new church building we had bought. After a few months we had received $90,000 of the $150,000 we needed to finish the remodel of the building, but unfortunately, we got stuck at that number for a while. To make matters worse, our church body was shrinking at that time because the building we bought was 18 minutes away from our current location. Things looked tough financially and to make matters worse, our regular expenses had increased because we still had to pay rent in the building we were meeting in as well as the mortgage and utilities on the building we just purchased.
Needless to say, I was stressed! So what did I do? I declared the promises of God about finances and commanded the money to come in. As I did that, the Lord spoke to me and told me to sow a $5,000 financial seed to a particular ministry. That was almost all the money we had left in the bank, but I knew it was God so I obeyed.
I’d love to tell you I had full confidence and no doubt sowing the seed would work, but I didn’t. I was stressed! As my friend Ashley Terradez says, “After I sowed that seed I quit thinking about a harvest and would have been happy with a refund.” God was faithful, however, and that $5,000 seed turned into $50,000 that came into the church that month. That was almost everything we needed to finish our remodel. The next month the rest came in and we finished the remodel and moved into our current location in July of 2019.
God met our needs, but He did it because we sowed seed! If you’ve gotta need, sow a seed! Whatever your need is, reach into God’s seed-bag of promises and find one that fits your situation. As you sow the seed with your lips by declaring God’s promise, you will reap a harvest of blessings! I hope this article has encouraged you! If you’d like to find out more about what happens when we speak God’s word, check out this message I taught at Grace Life Church.
