Luke 8:4-15 And when much people were gathered together, and were come to him out of every city, he spoke by a parable:… The first snowdrop, the first green leaf on naked hedges, the first few notes that sounding from bush or tree break the long, dreary silence — still more, the first smile that lights up an infant's face, its first gleam of intelligence, its first broken word, possess an interest and yield a pleasure peculiar to themselves. With more interest still — did the world hold such treasures — would we look on the first stanzas of Homer's muse; the first attempt of Archimedes' skill; the first oration of Demosthenes; the first sermon of ; the first sketch of Rubens; though we could hope to see nothing in these but the dawn of talents, which, at maturity, produced their splendid works, and won them immortal fame. What gives the interest to these things, gives a peculiar interest to this parable. Others may be as instructive and as beautiful, but of all those parables that He strung like pearls on the thread of His discourses, this is the first Jesus ever spake. As peculiarly befitting Him who came to sow saving truths broadcast on the world, no subject could form a more suitable introduction; and with the Divine skill with which He chooses, Jesus handles the topic. I. THE SOWER II. THE SEED. 1. There is life in seed. Gospel truth is the incorruptible and immortal seed; and though ornaments, polish, illustrations, eloquence in sermons, may help the end in view, as feathers do the arrow's flight, or their wings the thistle-downs, as they float, sailing through the air, to distant fields, it is to the truth of God's Word, blessed by God's Spirit, that sinners owe their conversion, and saints their quickening and comfort in the house of God. 2. There is force in seed. What so worthy to be called the power as well as the wisdom of God as that Word which, lodged in the mind, and accompanied by the Divine blessing, fed by showers from heaven, rends hearts, harder than the rocks, in pieces? (Jeremiah 23:29). 3. There is a power of propagation in seed. There is not a shore which shall not be sown with this seed; not a land but shall yield harvests of glory to God and of souls for heaven. III. THE SOIL. 1. Hearers represented by the wayside. Some who carefully cultivate their fields, or their gardens, or their business, or their minds, take no pains whatever to cultivate their hearts. 2. Hearers represented by the stony ground. What have we here? the Word listened to with attention; with more, much more than attention; with such feelings as a man under sentence of death hears the news of his pardon, or men on a wreck, lashed to the mast, hanging on the shrouds, hear the cry, the joyful cry, "A boat! a lifeboat!" Let us remember that convictions may be mistaken for conversion; admiration of the servant for attachment to his Master; an appreciation of the moral beauties of the gospel for an appreciation of its holiness; the pleasures of emotion, or such gratification as taste enjoys in a beautiful discourse, for the pleasures of piety. 3. Those represented by the ground with thorns. Dr. Johnson put the point well, when, on Garrick showing him his beautiful mansion and grounds, the great moralist and good man laid his hand kindly on the player's shoulder, and said, "All! David, David, these are the things which make a death-bed terrible!" The equally dangerous and deadly influence of great poverty I may illustrate by a scene which I have not forgotten, nor can forget. Alone, in the garret of a dilapidated house, within a wretched room, stretched on a pallet of straw, covered only by some scanty, filthy rags, with no fire in the empty chimney, and the winter wind blowing in cold and fitful gusts through the broken, battered window, an old woman lay, feeble, wasted, grey. She had passed the eleventh hour; the hand was creeping on to the twelfth. Had she been called? It was important to turn to the best account the few remaining sands of life; so I spoke to her of her soul, told her of a Saviour — urging her to prepare for that other world on whose awful border her spirit was hovering. She looked; she stared; and raising herself on her elbow, with chattering teeth, and ravenous look, muttered "I am cold and hungry." Promising help, I at the same time warned her that there was something worse than cold and hunger. Whereupon, stretching out a naked and skinny arm, with an answer which if it did not satisfy the reason touched the feelings, she said, "If you were as cold and as hungry as I am, you could think of nothing else." The cares of the world were choking the Word. 4. Those represented by the good ground. (1) They receive the Word. In their case it does not, so to speak, go in at the one ear and come out at the other. It does not fall on their minds to run off like water from a stone; it falls, but it is as seed into a furrow, to lodge itself in their hearts. They do not reject, but receive it. (2) They understand it — appreciate its value; feel its power; and "comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge."(3) They keep the Word: as — in contradistinction to soils that, puffed up by winter frosts, throw out, or others that starve their plants — good ground keeps the corn. With hearts where the tenderness of flesh is associated with the tenaciousness of stone, as granite keeps the letters of its inscription, so they "keep the Word."(4) They bring forth fruit. In the form of good works, of unselfish, gentle, and heavenly dispositions, of useful, noble, holy, and Christian lives, they bring forth fruit — some much; some little; but all some. (Thomas Guthrie, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And when much people were gathered together, and were come to him out of every city, he spake by a parable: |
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