Matthew 13:3

‘And he spoke to them many things in parables, saying,'

Then Jesus spoke to them many things ‘in parables', illustrative stories. For while to His disciples He spoke plainly, as in the Sermon on the Mount, to the crowds He told stories with ‘hidden' meanings. Each could then take from them the message that they were open to receive, or that the Holy Spirit would apply to them, and it was of course open to them to come and ask what the meaning of the parable was. Meanwhile even when He spoke of the Kingly Rule of Heaven they gave no hint of any stirrings towards insurrection. Note the ‘many things'. This suggests that He spoke far more than is recorded here. Parables in fact both revealed and concealed, depending on the heart and understanding of the hearer, and they prevented people from becoming ‘Gospel-hardened' and getting wrong ideas which could then be blamed on Him.

“Behold, the sower went forth to sow,”

All Jesus' hearers were familiar with the sight of the sower, as he went out with his bag or other such container full of seed to be sown, and tossed it this way and that as he scattered the seed over his own strip of land. And as they heard mention of the sower many of their thoughts would go back to the words of Proverbs 11:18, ‘he who sows righteousness has a sure reward,' and, somewhat guiltily (because they had not done it), to Hosea 10:12, ‘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.' They would recognise that this sower was therefore issuing a call for repentance and righteousness in the light of the presence in Jesus of the Kingly Rule of Heaven.

And what would He sow? We find the answer in Isaiah 55:10. There seed for the sower was the result of God's rain falling on God's earth, producing ‘seed for the sower', and this was figurative for God's word going forth to fulfil His will, accomplishing what He pleased and prospering in the way in which He sent it.