Reel Luke

Jesus Teaches About Seeds

Luke 8:4–15

Intro to Reel Luke
Reel Luke Leader's Guide
More Reel Questions

Helpful Stuff to Know

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  • Jesus often taught using parables — simple stories that were easy to understand but not always easy to believe because they challenged the status quo or unsettled the comfort zone. His parables always featured common images and familiar settings, in this case a farmer planting seed.

Be Sure Not to Miss

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  • Two thousand years after Jesus taught this parable, we still understand it today — his images are timeless and his Truth never changes.
  • Jesus described four different ways people hear and receive God’s Word so that everyone listening would be able to find themselves in the story.
  • All the seed was the same. But the ground where the seed fell was different.

Be Careful About

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  • This parable doesn't say it's our responsibility to prepare the soil (a human heart) to receive the seed (God's Word). In 1 Corinthians 3:6, Paul says that he planted seed and someone else watered it. There's no mention of tilling the soil of someone else's heart. ​

1. Read Luke 8:4–15

Here's a few different ways you can read and recap the story with your group.

  • Read it through one time with people just listening to you. Then read it through a second time with people following along in their own Bibles.
  • Ask a few people to act out the story while you read it.
  • Ask one or two people to retell the story after hearing it.
  • Ask two people to retell the story in the first person, as though they were actually there. One person can do the play-by-play (tell the details of what happened), and the other can offer color commentary (add details about how they felt, what surprised them, what confused them, etc.). First-person retelling can make the story feel more real. It's also a blast.

2. Reel Questions (set the scene)

  • Where did this story happen? What do you think it looked like? Smelled like? Sounded like?
  • Make a list of all the people in the story (including "crowd" if there is one), and give a one-word description of each e.g. impatient, desperate, funny, selfish, awkward, etc.
  • List everything that Jesus did and said in the story. What was your favorite scene or statement?

3. Story-Specific Questions

  • Why do you think Jesus sometimes used parables to teach?
  • Why do you think people hear and respond to God's Word differently?
  • What do you think Jesus meant when he said, “Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand”?
  • What are ways people can keep God’s Word in their hearts (8:12), grow deep roots of faith (8:13), and love Jesus more than the world (8:14)?

4. Wrap-Up Question

  • Why do you think this story is included in the Bible? What do you think God wants us to learn from it?

5. Pray