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The Growth of the Seed: The Four Hearts in Matthew 13:3-23
Two Aspects of Being a "Seed"
There are two aspects to the secret of being a "seed" for an effective operation. On one hand, we ourselves are a "seed," which means we are good for nothing but burial. The principle of being a seed is for us to be hidden, to be full of life, and to be ready to grow and bear fruit. This is to live the life of the Lord Jesus, who considered Himself as a seed (John 12:24). On the other hand, how do we become such a seed? We must realize that the Lord Himself is the seed within us, and we must give Him the proper way to grow. We all have the Lord's seed abiding in us (1 John 3:9). We have all been regenerated with the living and abiding word of God, which is an incorruptible seed (1 Pet. 1:23). Now that we have this seed within us, we need to learn how that seed can grow. The growth of the seed is a matter of having a proper heart.
The Four Kinds of Hearts
In Matthew 13:3-23 we have the parable of the sower. This portion of the word speaks of four kinds of hearts. We are all familiar with this parable. The Lord likened Himself to a sower who went out sowing seeds. Then the seeds landed on four different types of earth, representing four different kinds of hearts. But as we shall see, these hearts are actually related to one another. These four hearts can be summarized as follows: the heart with traffic (v. 4, 19); the heart with rocks (v. 5-6, 20-21); the heart with thorns (v. 7, 22); and the good heart which bears fruit (v. 8, 23). Only the fourth and last heart gives the seed the proper growth. We recognize that this parable shows four different kinds of hearts, but this parable shows more than that. It is actually about the growth of Christ in the heart. How do we know this? Because the thorns, which are from the third kind of heart, grow in the shallow ground, which is the second kind of heart. Thorns grow on dry, shallow places. Any soil that is rich and deep rarely has thorns. This indicates that these four kinds of hearts can be seen as progressive and related to one another. They can also be four possible conditions of the same heart.
The Definition of the Heart
First we must ask, "What is the heart?" We know that man has a body, soul, and spirit. Our spirit is made up of our conscience, intuition, and fellowship. Our soul is made up of our mind, emotion, and will. What, then, is our heart? Our heart is our soul regulated by our conscience. When a good conscience regulates a person's soul, then he has a good heart. When a person does not have a good conscience to regulate his soul, then he has a bad heart. If we say that a certain man is evil, and has an evil heart, what does that mean? It means he has an evil conscience, and out of his evil conscience he has an evil living.
What is it to have a good heart? To have a good heart requires a good conscience, and a good conscience comes from the healthy experience of the human spirit. The experience of our spirit begins with the intuition. When we have a desire to be in the Lord's presence, and the Lord moves within us, this is our intuition. In turn, this intuition generates fellowship, and we begin to fellowship more with the Lord. Then out of this fellowship we have a good conscience. When we have a good conscience, it means that we also have a good heart. Our conscience determines what kind of person we are. When we talk about the heart, we should realize that we are also talking about the conscience. A person who has a good heart is someone who has a good conscience operating within him.
...cont'd on page 2
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