That’s how Jesus pictures himself in parables in Matthew 13:1-40.

Sowing seed. Rooting out the weeds sown by an enemy. Harvesting the good grain at the end of the season.

Pointing out that even the tiniest seed can grow into a tree sturdy enough to support the nests of birds.

You know He’s the farmer for certain in the last of the parables in that group, because He says so (v. 37).

This is an accurate agronomical forecast he’s giving.

You’re not going to get 100% yield.

Sow anyway. Sow all you can.

Sow even along the edges of the path where the birds will eat it up. They have to poop sometime, somewhere.

Sow even among the rocks in the sun. You never know what might spring up, even for a short time.

Sow even among thorns. You’re not responsible for them choking out the new growth.

Sow on the good soil, too. You might get a hundred times more seed-bearing plants. Or sixty. Or thirty.

Sow even where the enemy tries to sabotage the harvest by planting weeds. it’ll all be sorted out later.

In the first parable with the different soils, the seed is the word of God. In the later one with the weeds, it is the sons of the kingdom.

But who’s the farmer in the first parable?

I think it’s us.

I think from the first parable’s phrasing, we’re to sow the same way He does in the later one:

Any way and anywhere we can, expecting nothing, weeding out bad teaching (such as a false “gospel” of wealth in this life) just in the same way He weeds out bad teachers … then rejoicing at whatever growth God gives and whatever harvest the angels bring in.

It’s pretty amazing how much a Carpenter knows about planting and seeds and trees. How sin began with a tree, and ended with one. How God cast man out of a garden, and men took God captive in another. How that story becomes a gospel that grows like dough with yeast. How we grow to maturity in it, and it grows in us, and we grow more like Him.

But He gets that knowledge honestly.

As I recall, His Father planted that first garden in the east, in Eden …