1. The next time Jesus taught beside Lake Galilee, a big crowd gathered. It was so large that he had to sit in a boat out on the lake, while the people stood on the shore.
2. He used stories to teach them many things, and this is part of what he taught:
3. Now listen! A farmer went out to scatter seed in a field.
4. While the farmer was scattering the seed, some of it fell along the road and was eaten by birds.
5. Other seeds fell on thin, rocky ground and quickly started growing because the soil wasn't very deep.
6. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched and dried up, because they did not have enough roots.
7. Some other seeds fell where thorn bushes grew up and choked out the plants. So they did not produce any grain.
8. But a few seeds did fall on good ground where the plants grew and produced thirty or sixty or even a hundred times as much as was scattered.