Mark 4:15, commentary and pictures

These are hearers beside the path where the word is sown who hear it, but Satan comes at once and carries away what was sown in their hearts, as seed falling beside the path is eaten by birds. The seed is the word of God, the gospel truth sown to restore loyalty to God by speaking the words of life and scattering publications with care and self-denial while trusting God for the growth. The loss comes because the heart is hard like a beaten highway and crowded and inattentive, hardened by neglected moral powers and cherished evil habits, following impulse and pleasure and company rather than duty, and weakened by worldly concerns and selfish aims so it does not take the word to itself or feel its need. Satan works even while the gospel is preached to keep truth from taking lasting hold, distracting by worldly cares, criticism, doubt and attention to manner, and stealing it through sarcasm, gossip and slander against messengers and through words of unbelief from trusted ministers and members that root in weak hearers and ripen into open unbelief. The hard ground need not remain hard but must be broken up by deep repentance that puts away self, pride, avarice, evil thinking and speaking and long evil habits, and the word is kept not by hearing alone but by meditating with prayer, dwelling on God's love and redemption, and by loving personal ministry that presents the Saviour and the cross without delay, for what seems lost may yet spring up years later.

The Wayside Picture

These are the hearers by the wayside where the word is sown: they hear it, but Satan comes immediately and takes away the word sown in their hearts, pictured by seed falling beside the path and being eaten by birds. The seed is the word of God, the gospel truth sown to bring people back to loyalty to God. That seed is scattered like seed by speaking the words of life and sharing publications that contain truth, sown with care and self-denial while its growth is trusted to God, whose grace can awaken it in a heart so it bears fruit to His glory.

The parable shows the different kinds of hearts responding to Christ's teaching and the tendencies of the human heart among the different classes He had to deal with, including the hard-hearted and evil-disposed and worldly-minded hearers. It explains why His personal ministry had meager immediate results despite miracles of goodness and mercy in healing the afflicted and casting out demons. People were left free to accept or reject Him, and He used no miraculous agency or compulsion to force belief or obedience.

He left men to do for themselves the work of correcting the evils of their natures, instructing them how to unite their human efforts with His divine power and triumph through His strength over besetting sins. That experience was necessary to give moral power to Christian character and fit it for the courts of Heaven, preserving the free moral agency God has given to man. The parable was given to meet disappointment and doubt about who received Him and why He had not established a temporal kingdom, as an illustration meant to awaken thought, and those wanting fuller understanding could ask Him, as the disciples did.

Why the Word Is Lost

The wayside heart is hard like a beaten path or highway, hardened and unresponsive to divine wisdom through neglected moral powers and cherished evil habits. Such hearers resist God's requirements and follow natural impulse and inclination rather than duty, keeping pleasure-loving and corrupt company and exposing themselves to temptation. They may profess belief and appear to regard truth yet fail to grasp its sacredness, finally losing regard for it when temptation comes. The seed falls on an inattentive heart crowded by worldly concerns, selfish aims, pleasures, and sin, whose spiritual faculties are weakened so it does not grasp that the word applies to itself. It fails to see personal need and danger, overlooks Christ's love, and treats the message of grace as irrelevant.

Satan works while the gospel is preached to remove truth before it takes lasting effect, distracting hearers with worldly concerns, criticism, doubt, and unbelief. Attention to a speaker's words or manner can keep them from receiving needed truth even while Christ draws them and the Spirit seeks to impress the word on their hearts. He takes the word from hearts that do not receive it firmly through criticism, sarcasm, gossip, and slander about ministers, sermons, or church members. Such talk makes people, especially children and the unconverted, lose respect for God's messengers and treat His word lightly. He also takes it away through trusted ministers and members who speak out their unbelief and darkness, whose words of doubt take root in a weak hearer who trusts them, then spring up and bear fruit in open unbelief, refusal to preach, fascination with spiritualism, and leaving the truth. Satan claims such a one as prey, evil angels carry the news to his agents on earth to charm and fascinate him, and Satan exults to work unperceived, so to talk out unbelief to other minds is cruel and dishonoring to God.

Some are convinced by Christ's teaching and resolve to live holy lives, with souls stirred and hearts throbbing with new purpose, charmed by doctrine ennobling in principle yet easily understood and with high spiritual attainments seeming very desirable at the time. But before truth takes root Satan overcomes them with evil suggestions and temptations, and as other things occupy the mind the words of life are forgotten. Sins that seemed heinous are clasped again, worldly cares and unfavorable surroundings cause relapse into indifference, and the impression soon passes when they again mingle with the world. The heart's later actions reveal whether the seed took root and bore fruit or thorns and brambles overcame it, while others in contrast begin from that moment a holier life and daily carry out Christ's principles so truth is never effaced.

Wayside hearers may hear important, new and strange truth deeply interested and impressed, even hungering after righteousness, yet Satan comes immediately to catch away the good seed and sow tares in its place. The cares of life and deceitfulness of riches choke the seed, attractions allure the mind, and unimportant things pleasing the fancy and soothing the carnal mind are cherished instead of precious truth. Convictions of the Spirit are silenced, and if affections are set on earth the loveliness of Christ fades, so labor is largely lost unless thorough plans fasten truth on minds and hearts. Hearers need not remain hard or inattentive, for the Spirit seeks to free people from absorption in worldly things and awaken desire for lasting treasure, but resisting the Spirit leads to neglecting God's word. People are responsible for the hardness that keeps seed from rooting and can choose to have their hearts cultivated. Satan actively seeks to take away the word as soon as people hear it, so the cross of Christ must be taught repeatedly lest he snatch the seed before it takes root.

Keeping the Seed Alive

The hard, unploughed heart cannot let the sown word take root and spring up to bear fruit, but must be broken up by deep repentance that prepares its soil. Cherished self with doubt and unbelief, lack of love and unity, and evil thinking and evil speaking quench the life of Christ in the soul and leave faith shallow and valueless, and selfish love of the world, pride, avarice and greed with long-standing evil habits must be exposed and put away lest good resolutions vanish when the tempter speaks. Self must be cast out, the vessel purified, and deeper ploughing with deep heart-searching in longing for true holiness must develop genuine faith, love, trust and gentleness and revive the spark of love for God and man. Evil growths that choke the good seed must be uprooted through earnest effort in Christ's strength, so that truth can take root and bear fruit.

In contrast to the wayside, Satan and his agencies cannot take the word from those who keep it. Hearing or reading alone is not enough, but to benefit a person must meditate on Scripture truth with earnest attention and prayerful thought, learn its meaning and take in its spirit. Filling the mind with pure thoughts and dwelling on God's love, mercy and plan of redemption brings clearer understanding and greater desire for purity, and study in communion with God transforms the soul.

Hearts as hard as a beaten highway, where the seed cannot readily take root, can be softened by presenting the Savior through loving, personal ministry marked by Christlike sympathy and love, where argument alone may not move them. Truth spoken in sermons is seed sown in the heart that Satan will often snatch away immediately so the good effect is lost, and therefore sermons must be followed by personal visiting and praying with individuals to keep the seed. Ministry should be more like that of Jesus by preaching fewer sermons and doing more personal labor, and if any part must be limited it should be long argumentative discourses rather than personal work, while still holding a knowledge of the truth. The seed springs up and bears fruit when Christ and His redeeming love and the cross are presented with the truth and practically applied without delay, since merely argumentative teaching may fail to bring truth home and the opportunity to hear may be someone's last.

The word sown may show no effect at once yet later take root and bear fruit to God's glory as listeners remember and pass the instruction on to save others. Truth sown by wise personal distribution of publications makes impressions not readily forgotten, and can lie buried for years beneath worldly rubbish and pleasing, deceiving fables until earthly sorrow or affliction softens the heart and it springs up and bears fruit. What is heard in a single discourse may be carried to other places, there find lodging in the heart, spring up, bear fruit and lead to conversion, which is reason not to end meetings while people still come with interest.

The mind is especially impressionable in early life, so good seed should then be sown in good soil to bear fruit unto eternal life. Parents must do the preparing work for young children by keeping them under their own teaching till eight or ten years of age, making the open air amid flowers and birds the schoolroom and nature's treasures the textbook, and opening God's great book of nature as fast as minds can comprehend. They must cultivate minds and form correct habits instead of wasting time and labor in following worldly fashions, so lessons given will not soon be forgotten. Teaching children truth is sowing seeds whose full good results will be revealed only on the great day of God, even though some hear without retaining because Satan immediately takes the sown truth from their hearts.

Truth can also be planted through faithful lives and simple explanations even where hearers are at first unreceptive and Satan removes the word before it can take root or bear fruit, as shown when the example of Waldensian students stirred questions and the truth they shared entered other students' minds. Seeds of truth so dropped into minds and hearts can grow under the Holy Spirit's influence and lead to salvation. The heart is ground where teaching sown as seed grows to a harvest, so the books put before children and youth matter: science and philosophy hiding thorns of skepticism, vague fanciful fairy stories, and writings on Scripture subjects weaving in fanciful human interpretations sow seed that grows and bears infidelity, seen in human depravity.