The Parable of the Sower

Notes

1. Let us not blame the Master for the deaf ears and the blind eyes. We blind them ourselves by turning from God's voice till, becoming deaf to its peculiar loveliness, we can not distinguish it. So, with the light and pleadings of the Spirit. Had He spoken to them in plain language, they would not have believed, and would probably have sought His life. He sought to arrest their attention by speaking to them in parables, and so lead them to seek the truth, and yet leave them without excuse. It is to the eager eye, the open ear, the responsive heart, that God reveals His truths.

2. The parable is a familiar one, known to dwellers in most countries. There is the hard-beaten, wayside path, the stony ground, the thorns by the field-side, and the well-prepared soil. The seed, as told in another parable, represents the word of God. Our lesson is not found in the seed, nor in the sowing, but in the soil of the heart. If we wish it to become a hardened pathway on which all things shall travel and make no impression, we may. Our minds may become as a worn and barren highway on which travels everything, making no impression, and forming a place for the feeding-ground of demons. We may let the soil remain filled with unproductive rock, or we can "gather out the stones," and "break up the fallow ground." The third class rouses our sympathy. They do receive the word; they have good soil, but they allow pleasure, care, worry, anxiety, and other things to choke the word, and they bring no fruit to perfection.

3. "'Into good ground,' those whose hearts are prepared by grace to receive it honestly, and to give it opportunity to grow. In a rich and mellow soil—in a heart that submits itself to the free influence of truth, unchecked by cares and anxieties; under the showers and summer suns of divine grace; with the heart spread open, like a broad, luxuriant field, to the rays of the morning and to evening dews, the Gospel takes deep root and grows; it has full room, and then and there only shows what it is."—Barnes.