Noting that the sower scattered seed everywhere, and some “…fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.” Jesus explains, “The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful.”
If you pick raspberries or blackberries or any other kind of fruit that grows on thorny plants, you know that harvesting that kind of fruit is not a pleasant experience. The multitude of thorns that protrude from even the thinnest stem makes you think twice about gathering any of it. But worse is the proliferation of stems – they are virtually weeds, among which little else can find root. Either way, the picture is very unlike a farmer’s field.
Some people’s souls are like that. The concerns of worldly life and/or the accumulation of wealth has all their attention. They are not the kind of people given to dying to self or sacrificing for the Kingdom. While they may appear lush and helpful from a distance, from God’s viewpoint such an individual is altogether unfruitful. What the Lord sows with purpose cannot grow there. The wild things grow there instead, and no matter how many seeds land, the “worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful.”
This part of Jesus’ parable has a pointed – almost thorny – implication. The seed of the Good News may have germinated in your soul, and may even be growing. But if we allow the weeds to also grow, they will crowd out the good thing God started. Yet sometimes those weeds look pretty inviting. They even seem to have fruit of their own. But to reach for it is to injure yourself. It must be pulled up, not cultivated!
When you pull up such a weed, you’ll find that it is connected underground to more weeds. In fact, they propagate underground. The roots go on for some distance, and pulling them up is both difficult and painful. It disrupts the soil all around. But pull them up you must, or the thorny plant just keeps growing. If you try to surgically cut it out, you may remove it in one spot, it just pops up in another.
We don’t really need to be bombarded with commercials for selfishness and greed. Those things grow naturally, all of themselves. If we let them take root we will find them hindering what God is doing in our lives. If we fail to pull them out – painful as it is – they’ll eventually choke out what He purposed altogether.
Don’t let the things of this world impair your worship of Him. Don’t let your natural need to ‘get ahead’ impede your sacrifice for His purpose. Pull out the weeds, even through it is horribly disruptive for a season. Then the message of the Kingdom can find not only fertile, but unhindered soil to grow!
The things of this world lie too close to thy heart; the earth with its things have bound up thy roots; thou art an earth-bound soul, thou art wrapped up in thick clay. ‘If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him’; how then can he be fruitful in the vineyard?
John Bunyan
APPLICATION: Intentionality
There is but one way to rid a garden of thorns without risk of personal injury, and that is by fire.