Answer: When the "seed" (the Word of God) falls on good soil (the hearts and minds of people who hear the Word and understand it), these people produce a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown, (verses 8 and 23).
MORE INFORMATION AND/OR OTHER SCRIPTURE REFERENCES:
These "good soil people" OBEY the Word they have heard and understood through the teaching and preaching and study of the Gospel. They then grow deep roots in the KNOWLEDGE (by continual study) of God and His Word, and continually grow and mature as children of God. They put God's teachings into their lives and LIVE THEM. They, by showing Christ's Word in their lives and by teaching others the message of the Good News of the kingdom of heaven, produce a "crop" of "the fruits of the spirit," (see Galatians 5:22-26, Philippians 1:9-11, and Colossians 1:10).
Others that they are leading to Christ look on their lives and SEE the Word of God--the seed--bearing fruit in that Christian life. God's Word WORKS IN them, and they, therefore, work IN God. This is the kind of soil we need in our hearts and minds to be truly committed to the Lord and His Word, and to serve God faithfully until the end of our lives. These "good soil" people produce a crop within themselves many times what was sown in them, and they also plant the seed in others for the harvest of the Lord.
