This week on Things Unseen, our theme is take heed, take care how you hear.

Yesterday I mentioned the hearer's grid that William Perkins, the great early English preacher

theologian employed and thinking about the different kinds of hearers who listened to

him. But a greater than William Perkins also had a hearer's grid, didn't he?

And you're familiar with it, I'm sure. It's the parable of the sore.

Jesus's story about the farmer, the seed and the soils is told in each of the first three

gospels. And Jesus hints that it is really the parable of parables.

Remember how he says in Mark 4 verse 13, that if the disciples didn't understand this parable,

they'd never understand the other ones. So as if he's saying, this parable is the key.

If you can't follow it and apply it, then it's clear that you're not yet hearing properly.

Well you know the parable that portrays a common place seen in rural Palestine in the

day of our Lord Jesus. It's seed-sowing time. Farmer goes out into his field with his

basket of seed and he starts sowing. The same farmer, the same quality of seed.

But the results vary considerably. And as Jesus explains, this is a picture of the word

of God being sown by himself of course in his preaching and then in the preaching of

his disciples. Same preachers, same word preached. But there are significant differences

in what happens next. And these differences are all related to the condition of the

soil into which the same quality of seed has been sown. That is, on the spiritual condition

of those of us who hear the word of God. And in Jesus' hearers' grid there are four

different kinds of soil, four different kinds of hearers of the word of God.

The first one is pictured by the pathway. Some seed fell on the pathway and the birds

appeared. The seed has hardly touched the ground before the birds swooped down for their

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