Mark 4:1-9

The Voice

4 ^1-2Jesus went out again to teach by the Sea of Galilee. When the crowd became unmanageable, He climbed aboard a boat and sat down to teach the people listening on the shore by telling them parables. One of His teachings went like this:

Jesus: ³Listen! A farmer went out and sowed his seed. ⁴As he scattered it, one seed fell along the hardened path, and a bird flapped down and snapped it up. ⁵One seed fell onto rocky places where the soil was thin, so it sprang up quickly. ⁶But when the hot sun scorched the fragile stems and leaves, the seedling withered because its roots didn’t go deep in the soil. ⁷One of the seeds fell among the weeds and thorns, which crowded the seedling out of producing a crop. ⁸And the rest of the seeds fell in good, rich soil. When they sprouted, the plants grew and produced a crop 30, 60, even 100 times larger than expected for every seed that the farmer had sown.