Matthew 13:18

“Hear you then the parable of the sower.”

Note first how Jesus focuses attention on the sower without actually explaining who the sower is. He leaves each person to recognise who the sower is for themselves. This is typical of His way of only indirectly calling attention to Himself. But as we discover in Matthew 13:19 He makes clear that it is certainly someone who is proclaiming the Kingly Rule of Heaven, and this in turn associates it with the triumph of righteousness (Matthew 6:33). The sower goes forward to produce righteousness and establish the Kingly Rule of Heaven.

In the Old Testament Scriptures we find a similar picture of the sowing of righteousness. In Proverbs 11:18 we are told, ‘he who sows righteousness has a sure reward.' So any mention of a sower would raise this idea to mind.

The thought of the sower going forth to sow would also remind many of His listeners of Hosea's description, which clearly has the day of deliverance in mind. It describes how Israel were to achieve the coming promised day of righteousness when righteousness would be poured on them (Hosea 10:12). They were to ‘Sow to yourselves in righteousness'. But how would they sow to themselves in righteousness? By themselves responding to and listening to godly sowers who would preach among them the message of righteousness. They could choose to do so (or choose not to do so). For God provided prophets in all eras but it was they who decided whom they would listen to. And once they chose to hear the message of righteousness it would then result in the raining of righteousness among them. ‘Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap according to mercy, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the LORD, until he come and rain righteousness upon you' (Hosea 10:12). In other words ‘listen to your prophets as they sow and respond to them'.

On hearing of the sower many of His listeners would remember these words. They would thus recognise in the idea of the sower going forth one who was to call to repentance the whole of Israel. For ‘sowing righteousness' for Israel would be by their encouraging their representatives to sow righteousness to them, so producing a righteous nation. Thus when John ‘came in the way of righteousness' (Matthew 21:32) he was sowing righteousness. And they would see this as something that would especially occur in the future through the activity of the coming Messiah. He too would come sowing righteousness. In the context of the Kingly Rule of Heaven, and of the Old Testament, to be ‘the sower' was therefore a Messianic claim.

It is true that the implication in Hosea appears at first to us to be a direct appeal to Israel as individuals, but that is because we apply things individually and personally. That is not, however, how Israel would have seen it. In their eyes the way that they would sow righteousness to themselves would be by raising up righteous leaders and teachers, who arose with their support, whose sowing of righteousness would then produce righteousness in them. And the most important to be involved in this would be the King acting on their behalf, for he was ‘the breath of their nostrils'. When they had a righteous king who ‘did what was right in the eyes of the Lord' righteousness would follow. So they would expect that such a sowing of righteousness would occur when in the final days God's righteousness and salvation was revealed (Isaiah 56:1). The future King would come sowing righteousness. And in terms of Isaiah that would point to the Redeemer who would come bringing righteousness and salvation (Isaiah 59:20 with 16). The Sower would be the One Who began the process by sowing righteousness.

There is a similar picture connecting sowing with the establishment of the Kingly Rule in Psalms 126:5, where the thought is of deliverance of the exiles in triumph preparatory to God's Kingly Rule. ‘Those who sow in tears will reap in joy. Though he go forth on his way weeping, bearing forth the seed, he will come again with joy, bringing his sheaves with him.' To Israel the sowing of seed through suffering prophets is to result in deliverance.

So when ‘the sower went forth to sow' their minds, if they were enlightened, should immediately have turned towards one who went forth preaching righteousness, and in view of Jesus' proclamation of the Kingly Rule of Heaven, to One Who proclaimed the Kingly Rule of Heaven.