The Life of Christ

• That seed would then fall indiscriminately upon beaten roadways, stony places thinly covered with soil, where thorns were present, as well as upon good ground.

When the word of God falls upon stony ground the birds of the air come and pluck away the word.

• Lk. 8:5 adds how the seed was trampled underfoot.

• When seed falls on hardened ground it’s likened to God’s word falling on hardened hearts.

• There is no openness within the heart to absorb the word.

• When a person has a hardened heart, the seed, or word of God, is quickly dismissed from one’s mind by the evil one.

This isn’t to say that the ground of the heart will always remain hardened.

• In Israel God had commanded that every seven years the farmland to rest (Ex. 23:10-11).

• Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove” (Ex. 23:10-11).

• For those who followed this law, rather than rest the ground of their entire farm, the farmer would not plant on one section of his farm for a year.

• To do so required rotating the fields so that some piece of ground was always resting.

The different crops were divided by hardened pathways that helped delineate the fields.

• Each year the hardened path would be plowed under so that a different part of farm could be rested, thus updating the plot configuration.

• When the Lord begins to draw somebody, He often first plows under the hardness of their heart by using a sudden unexpected catastrophe.

Before we go on to the next soil condition, let me say something more regarding the “birds” that stole the seed, prohibiting the seed from being planted.

• Verse 32 adds, “…so that THE BIRDS OF THE AIR come and NEST IN ITS BRANCHES.”

• These evil birds don’t just take the seed and are gone for good, but rather they return to “nest in the branches” according to verse 32.

• These evil birds live in the branches of our tree undetected; these nests represent the strongholds in our mind.

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Strongholds are usually undetected.

• A stronghold is wherever the enemy has planted an encampment in our mind.

• We all have pockets in our thinking which are still dominated by the enemy; we also call these “blind spots,” because they are hard to see undetected.

2 Cor. 10:4-6 reads, “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, 6 and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.”

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