Mark 4:16, commentary and pictures

This verse belongs to the parable of the sower, where the seed is the word of God sown in the human heart as soil to restore loyalty to God, and its growth follows the same laws as earthly seed. It pictures the stony-ground hearers who hear the word and at once welcome it with joy and eagerness. Their response has no depth or root in themselves but rests on feeling rather than steady principle, so it endures only briefly and withers when affliction, trial, temptation, or persecution arises because of the word. Receiving the word with gladness is right and is not itself the cause of falling; the failure is shallow commitment by those who did not count the cost or yield fully to its demands against habit and cherished sin. Such hearers need not remain unfruitful, for the heart as soil can be prepared through repentance and deeper plowing, accepting the cross and making radical change until truth takes lasting hold.

Parable Setting and Symbols

This is one of the sayings in the parable of the sower, where the seed is the word of God and gospel truth scattered in the human heart and mind as soil to bring people back to loyalty to God. The sowing of that spiritual seed is governed by the same laws as the sowing of earthly seed, and whether it takes root and bears good fruit or is overcome is eventually shown by a person's actions. Teaching is sowing, with its results as harvest, whether through speech and publications that let seeds of truth spring up and bear fruit or through clear object lessons that plant seeds of truth in children whose full good will be revealed on the day of God. Preaching itself prepares hearts to receive God's word as soil receives seed.

The parable sets forth the different conditions of the human heart and the classes taught by Christ. Together with the rest of the parable it explains why His personal ministry on earth produced meager immediate results despite miracles of goodness and mercy in healing the afflicted and casting out demons. He employed no miraculous agency to compel belief and no direct power to force obedience, but left men to themselves to choose or reject Him of their own free will without destroying the free moral agency given by God. They were to learn to unite human effort with divine power and to triumph through His strength over besetting sins, and this experience of free choice and overcoming is necessary to give moral power to Christian character and fit it for heaven. Jesus gave the parable to meet disappointment that He had not established a temporal kingdom and that the learned and wealthy were not accepting Him as Messiah.

The effect of seed sown as truth in hearers' minds may not be visible at once. In attentive listeners the teaching later springs up, bears fruit to God's glory, and helps save many as they remember it and pass it on. The mind as soil is impressible in early life, so good seed sown then upon good soil will bear fruit unto eternal life. Parental errors, mistakes, and example are reproduced in children and absorbed by them, injuring mental powers and leaving no taste nor aptitude for study. Parents must therefore keep the molding of the infant mind in their own hands and be the best teachers of their children till eight or ten years of age, making the open air amid flowers and birds the schoolroom and the treasures of nature the textbook, opening God's great book of nature before them as fast as their minds can comprehend so that lessons given amid such surroundings will not soon be forgotten, and devoting time and labor to cultivating minds and forming correct habits instead of wasting it in following the fashions of the world.

Joyful Yet Shallow Hearing

Mark 4:16 describes the stony-ground hearers who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness, welcoming it at once with joy and eagerness. They readily receive anything new and exciting. Their response has no depth and no root in themselves and endures only briefly.

It is governed by feeling rather than by deep, steady principle reaching down to the springs of action. They are halfhearted in trying to serve both self and Christ, weak in purpose and changeable in desire. They exalt the truth in word without doing it, because the seed has not rooted below the surface and the heart has not been renewed by the transforming influence of the Spirit. Such superficial Christianity does not transform character or daily life and is valueless in God's sight, for cherished self quenches the life of Christ. Unsanctified self remains alive instead of being crucified, and testing by God's Word exposes faithlessness, envy, jealousy, evil suspicions, doubt, unbelief, lack of love and unity, and evil thinking and speaking.

At first they speak earnestly with ardor and zeal about faith and hope. They urge others to accept the truth and condemn those who carefully weigh the evidence, and even reprove those of long experience for apparent deficiency and lack of enthusiasm, boasting in the strength and power of truth. When the pruning-knife of God is applied that they may bring forth fruit unto perfection, and plain, pointed, close truth is brought to bear upon the heart revealing deformity of character, their zeal dies and their voices are silent. When working men and women are needed and sacrifices must be made they are somewhere else.

When the sun rises in affliction, trouble, trial, temptation, persecution, reproach, or reproof because of the word, they are scorched, offended, and fall away, withering and dying. The trial that should deepen faith instead destroys it. They close their eyes to imperfections and yield the truth rather than submit to be sanctified through it, flattering themselves that they may get to heaven an easier way. Receiving the word joyfully is right and is not itself the reason they fall; the failure is shallow commitment by those who did not count the cost, face its demands against habits, or yield fully to its control and surrender cherished sin.

The first glad response may not last when hearers return to worldly surroundings and face cares and temptations: they can fall back into indifference and take up again sins that had seemed hateful in Christ's presence, while others by contrast begin a holier life and continue to live by His teachings. What is heard takes root and springs up to bear fruit, especially when the hearer is weak and trusts the speaker. So words of unbelief and darkness spoken by ministers or members even casually, or by throwing a few difficult passages into the mind, are received and soon produce open unbelief, refusal to preach, fascination with a spiritualist medium, and leaving the truth. To speak unbelief to other minds is to act as Satan's agent transmitting his darts, Satan claims the affected mind as prey and exults to work unperceived in this way.

Cultivating Deep Rooted Faith

Stony-ground hearers need not remain shallow and unfruitful, for people can choose what they become and the Spirit works to free them from worldly absorption and awaken desire for lasting treasure. Resistance to the Spirit leads to neglect of the word and keeps the seed from taking root, while repentance and earnest effort in Christ's name and strength can prepare the heart to receive it. The heart as soil must be prepared through deeper plowing, breaking before God in longing for true holiness, casting self out, purifying the vessel, and uprooting the evil growths that choke the good seed. Self cherished in the heart quenches Christ's life in the soul and hardens the heart, and when love and faith and trust are allowed to develop they bring forth gentleness and fruit to God's glory.

Truth takes deeper hold when hearers accept the cross as part of religious life and make the needed radical changes through patience, self-denial, and effort to change life. Shallow commitment fails because it does not count the cost, face the word's demands against habits, or yield fully to its control in surrender of cherished sin, though receiving the word joyfully is itself right. Without such cultivation the trial that should deepen faith instead withers it, for reproof readily offends and affliction, persecution, temptation, and reproach for truth's sake turn the unrooted away.

New believers need softening personal care and teaching that builds a deep-rooted life so the seed will not perish in shallow soil and worldly pleasures and burdens will not overcome them. They should be taught to live by Christ's life and character, deny natural inclination, bear burdens, serve and endure hardship, trust His love, and work for the lost. Presenting Christ as Saviour and exalting His redeeming love alongside theory holds hearers to Him, since a sermon leaving out the cross may miss a final opportunity to bring truth home to the heart.

Sowing truth calls for care, self-denial, perseverance, and trust in God who gives life to the seed, which under the Holy Spirit's influence springs up to bear fruit for God's glory and the saving of souls. The seed may lie dormant or buried for years beneath worldly rubbish and pleasing fables until sorrow or affliction softens hearts, then it springs up and bears fruit. Publications sown as seed are received with gladness by those who will not listen to a living preacher, leaving impressions not readily forgotten. Preaching prepares hearts to receive God's word, and continuing meetings while interest remains gives the seed opportunity to find place in the heart, convert, and bear fruit, since even a single discourse may leave an impression carried elsewhere.