Christ told us what evangelism would actually look like, and it’s not what the courses, seminars, and training programs promise.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).
This was not a suggestion for those with the gift of evangelism. It was a command to everyone who follows Christ.
Then He told a story about a farmer, and three of the four soils produced nothing.
The Sower, the Seed, and the Soil
Matthew 13 opens with a farmer going out to sow his seed. There are four landing places, with two distinct outcomes. And remarkably, Christ decodes it Himself so no one can misread it (Matthew 13:18–23).
Start with the seed, because Scripture defines it three times and never leaves us in the dark.
“The word of the kingdom” (Matthew 13:19).
“The sower sows the word” (Mark 4:14).
“The seed is the word of God” (Luke 8:11).
Peter says the same thing about how new birth happens: through “the living and abiding word of God” (1 Peter 1:23).
The seed is the gospel.
It is not our testimony, the latest evangelism program, or our persuasion. It’s the message.
We are the sowers. Every believer scattering that word.
Paul describes the division of labor exactly: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6). Then he adds the line that should govern all our expectations: “neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:7).
And the soil is the human heart. Christ says so plainly of the first case, where the evil one snatches away “what has been sown in his heart” (Matthew 13:19).
Four soils. The path, the rocky ground, the thorns, and the good soil.
Three produce nothing. Only one produces a harvest.
The Soil Is Not Neutral
The farmer does not choose his soil in this parable, and the soil does not improve itself. Christ presents the ground as He finds it. The condition determines the outcome.
Scripture tells us who prepares the ground, and it’s not the sower.
“I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26).
Lydia heard Paul, and “the Lord opened her heart to pay attention” (Acts 16:14).
I will maintain that God’s electing purpose stands behind what ground receives the word. But let me be careful: Matthew 13 never uses the language of election. That connection is an inference drawn from other texts, not a statement this parable makes directly. I do believe it is the right inference though.
What the parable says is enough. The sower cannot manufacture a harvest.
He can only be faithful with the seed.
This Week: The Rocky Ground
“As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away” (Matthew 13:20–21).
Read that again.
Almost every marker of what we normally view as a successful evangelistic encounter is present.
He hears. He receives. He receives immediately. He even receives with joy. But Luke goes further: these hearers “believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away” (Luke 8:13).
If you led this man to a decision, you would have reported a conversion. You would have been sincere. And you would have been wrong.
Notice what is missing. Root.
Root grows underground. It’s the part no one can photograph, count, or hold up as a result. And it is the only part that determines whether the plant survives when the sun comes up.
Why the Emotional Appeal Produces Rocky Ground
A seed on thin soil over rocks sprouts faster than seed in deep earth.
It has nowhere to go but up.
And that’s the whole danger.
Speed looks like success.
Work a crowd emotionally, and you will get a response. Play soft music, lower the lights, tell a sad story, push for the raised hand, extend the invitation one more verse.
Something will come up, and it will come up fast.
But an appeal aimed at feelings may produce a plant with no depth, because nothing has gone down deeply. Christ says the rocky-ground man has no root in himself. The failure is not in his circumstances. It is in soil that was never deep enough to hold him when the sun came.
And the sun always comes up.
Christ names it: tribulation and persecution, specifically “on account of the word” (Matthew 13:21). This is not general hardship. It’s the cost attached to the message itself: the family that now shuns you, the friends who stop calling, the coworkers who decide you think you’re better than they are.
Feeling got him in. But feeling has nothing to offer when following Christ begins to cost something.
Now notice what the appeal left out. Christ named the content of gospel preaching Himself, after the resurrection:
“that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations” (Luke 24:47).
Repentance is not advanced discipleship. It is the message.
Some call it optional because the word never appears in the book of John. The word Trinity also appears nowhere in Scripture, yet the doctrine is on every page. Absence of a term is not dismissive of the concept.
Take repentance out of the appeal, and you have removed the one demand that would have tested the ground before the sun did.
The Men Who Walked Away
Scripture gives us their names.
The disciples in John 6. Christ taught a hard saying, and “after this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him” (John 6:66). They are called disciples. They followed publicly. And John 6:64 gives the diagnosis: He knew from the beginning who did not believe.
Simon the magician. Acts records that he “himself believed, and after being baptized he continued with Philip” (Acts 8:13). Both a profession and baptism. But then he tried to purchase the Spirit, and Peter told him, “you have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God” (Acts 8:21).
We even have a fashionable word for this now: “deconstruction,” as though the man were dismantling something real.
John had a simpler explanation:
“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us” (1 John 2:19).
Their departure did not create the verdict.
It revealed one.
What This Means for Your Evangelism
None of this excuses us from the Great Commission. It corrects what we think we are doing while we obey it.
Sow the seed, not a feeling. The power is in the word, not in your delivery of it (Romans 1:16).
Stop counting sprouts. A response is not a harvest. Only time and fruit tell you which ground you were standing on.
Do not manufacture urgency that the gospel does not supply. If someone needs your pressure to respond, your pressure may be what they are responding to.
Preach the cost. Christ did; He told the crowds following Him to count it first (Luke 14:28). The rocky ground fails under tribulation, so tell them tribulation is coming as part of your message.
Leave the growth to God. You cannot turn rock into loam. God can, and He does (Ezekiel 36:26).
Notice that the parable never evaluates the sower. It evaluates the ground.
Paul states the principle outright: each laborer is rewarded “according to his labor” (1 Corinthians 3:8), not according to his harvest.
Continue to scatter the seed. Leave the fields to God.
To His Glory,
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