THE SOWER
J. A. Petersen
Luke 8: 4, 5 (first phrase)
I would like to say a word about the sower. The Lord Jesus here is employing an agricultural thought which is well known to all of us. He says, “The sower went out to sow his seed”.
What distinguishes the Lord Jesus from every other sower of seed is this, that He was also the seed; there is no other sower of whom that could be said but Himself. He says of Himself in John’s gospel, “Except the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, it abides alone; but if it die, it bears much fruit”, John 12: 24. That is a reference to Himself.
We are here in the presence of death, beloved; it is a solemn matter to be in the presence of death and to know too that death is working in each one of us in a human sense. The Lord Jesus said that He is the grain of wheat which has fallen into the ground and died. What makes the matter of death a matter which we can get through is the fact that Jesus died. He has been into it before us and He has been in it as no other man has been in it. At the same time He was the Sower, and that involves the great sovereign work of God in the glad tidings going forth since the Holy Spirit came, and it involves the Lord’s own ministry. Mark’s gospel begins that way, “Beginning of the glad tidings of Jesus Christ”. They are wonderful glad tidings. There were many people that came to hear. In this passage in Luke it says “a great crowd” came. There are more in this room today than usual, thank God for that, and the Lord wants to tell you that He is the Sower. He has the seed, His word, and it is your responsibility and mine as to what we do with the glad tidings. You have a responsibility.
Time fails to read the rest of the passage, but it is well known throughout Christendom, that the seed fell on good ground, thorny ground, rocky ground, and along the way. You and I are the ground and you have to ask yourself what kind of soil are you into which the gospel has come. I do not doubt that everyone here has heard something of the glad tidings, and if you were near Mrs Pilgrim you certainly would have heard it and she would have given you a tract too—hundreds of them she gave out. Our sister was a sower. The extension of the Lord Jesus in the gospel is in the saints, the brethren become the sowers, the preachers. But then there is the sovereignty of God; the seed falls here and it falls there—we all hear the same gospel; many of us have been to it many times it may be, but the responsibility in this chapter is on me, how have I heard? As it says in another place, How do you hear? A brother preached the glad tidings in our room last Lord’s day from Mark 7, where the Lord put His fingers to the man’s ears that he might hear right. Why? That he might speak right! Some of us are not saying the same things; we are humbled about it; we have to say that. This occasion is a humbling occasion too. But our sister has been an extension of the Sower; she met people on the trains, the buses, in her family, and she spoke of Christ. She was a sower of the word.
But then the responsibility is with you and me as to how the word is received. We are not here to speak about our sister, we are here to speak about the great Sower of the word, the Lord Jesus, who Himself was the seed. Christ is the seed.
The prophet Isaiah speaks of taking root downward, and bearing fruit upward (Isaiah 37: 31). That is in the Christian—it is not only that we are saved for eternity, but that we bear fruit upward to God; as our brother has said, heavenly ones able to minister to God in His service and worship. Luke’s gospel brings that out; the Lord says, Where are the nine? (Luke 17: 17).
Where have you been in relation to the Lord’s supper and your responsibility to God in this city? Our sister fulfilled her responsibility; she not only was a sower but she was good ground. That is what I would like to be, good ground to see that God’s word is nurtured in my heart, and in your heart, by faith. Faith works in the Christian, it works in us, it works certain things into a result. And then the Spirit is received by faith and thus the fruit is born, upward to God, the Spirit of His Son crying in our hearts, “Abba, Father”. Galatians 4: 6. That is the word taking effect in our hearts by the glad tidings. So we are not sitting around in one sense with sorrowful faces today, although we grieve with the relatives, and are glad to see them here, but we do rejoice that our sister is with Christ. We can praise God for that.
So there is something for God in this meeting, may it be so. “The sower went out to sow”—what it cost Him to sow! He did not go down to the granary and buy seed, He was the seed.
And now it is for us, dear friends, as the hymn says, to fill up the ranks at the present time with heavenly worth (Hymn 424), while God leaves us here, and to make God’s word effective in New York as far as you and I are concerned, and be effective for God in the glad tidings, effective for Him in His assembly, and in the service of God. We are either here for Christ, beloved, or we are not here for Him. He is not to be an appendage to our lives. What God is looking for—and our dear sister has set an example and has been a model for us—is that we are totally committed to Christ and His interests in this city. May we be helped and encouraged to follow on, for His name’s sake.