First Thought

וְיִבְטְח֣וּ בְ֭ךָ יוֹדְעֵ֣י שְׁמֶ֑ךָ כִּ֤י לֹֽא־עָזַ֖בְתָּ דֹרְשֶׁ֣יךָ יְהוָֽה׃

And those who know Your name will put their trust in You, For You, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek You. (Psalms 9:11)

Our Hebrew Quest study passage for this lesson is Matthew 13 and the parable of the sower. Yeshua clarifies that the “good soil” is someone who hears the word, understands it, and then does something with it. In contrast, the soil among the thorns is someone who hears the word but doesn’t fully trust in Adonai or his promises. We see one of these promises in Psalms 9:11.

It’s become a cliche for Bible teachers to ask, “which of the four soils are you?” In truth, for most of us, our lives at some point have reflected each of four soils. So the better question to ask might be:

“Today, in the next 1440 minutes, how can I make sure that I am the ‘good soil’, trusting in Adonai, and producing a yield for the Kingdom?”

Figure 22.1: Cove of the Sower from the east. This is the suggested location of Yeshua’s teaching we call ‘The Parable of the Sower’ (Matthew 13). This region’s acoustic properties have been analyzed. Scientists found that a person could be in a boat a few feet from the shore and easily be heard without amplification by ‘large crowds’ scattered several hundred feet up the embankment. Courtesy of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands