What does Luke 8:8 mean?
This completes the parable of the sower (Luke 8:4–7) by describing what we should all attain to become: good soil that readily takes the seed, nourishes it, and produces fruit. If our hearts are softened and ready for God's Word, Christ's truth will impact our entire lives, allowing us to display the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22–23). These behaviors and actions glorify God and show love to others.Mark emphasizes the growth, saying the seeds "produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold" (Mark 4:8). Matthew is similar, although he reverses the numbers (Matthew 13:23). In the ancient world, a decent crop could produce thirty-five times more output. A one-hundred-times multiplication of seed isn't physically impossible, but it would have been seen as a sign of God's blessing.
For Luke, the point of the chapter is the last phrase: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." The parable, itself, is about our responsibility to listen well (Luke 8:10, 15). Next is a parable which explains the purpose of Jesus' teaching: so that people will hear it and grow in understanding (Luke 8:16–18). Following, Jesus reveals that His family is not His flesh-and-blood relatives, but "those who hear the word of God and do it" (Luke 8:21).
Finishing out the chapter are four stories where Jesus expresses God's Word through miracles that people initiate or respond to with different levels of faith. Even when faced with powerful, supernatural acts, people can still shut their ears and refuse to hear God's Word.