OUR
REACTION TO THE WORD OF GOD
The parable of the
Sower is in such exact accord with the facts of life
that a Christian teacher, if he had to summarize in terms of agriculture what
he has seen throughout decades of teaching, would have to invent the parable to
express facts. This is the very first of
our Lords parables; it is one of the few the literal interpretation of which
is given us by the Saviour Himself; and so simple, so obvious, so convincing is
it that Jesus says, - Know ye not [do ye
not understand] this parable? and how shall ye know all the parables? (Mark 4: 13). And the truth of it can be put with extreme
simplicity:- motives, sown in the heart, create
action; and divine motives create a divine life.
Now the first
immense truth that we get is that there is a pre-established harmony between
Scripture and the human heart. The seed, our Lord says, is THE WORD OF GOD (Luke
8: 11).* Where in the
totally distinct parable of the Tares, the seeds are the children of the Kingdom, our Lord, as the
sole regenerator, says (Matt. 13: 37):- He that soweth the good seed is the
Son of man; but where it is solely the distributing of the Word of
God, and the reaction of the human mind to the Scripture, this is nowhere
stated: the sower can be an evangelist, or pastor, or
teacher, or colporteur; or a worker in the Sunday School or on the street or in
the home. Paul
Planted, he
says, and Apollos watered.
The whole and sole emphasis is on the
seed. The Seed is the Word of God,*
and the Word of God only: all therefore, which the human sower
may plant, all seed not the Word of God verbally or in substance,
is here completely ignored: the parable is solely the reaction of all minds
to the Holy Scriptures, whether those Scriptures be heard or read. The field is the world; and revealed truth is
designed for all men, and is to be sent and offered to all.
[*The Word of God
is defined in (Matthew 13: 19) as the word of the kingdom; for the
kingdom in mystery, the Church, and the kingdom manifestation, our Lords
Advent and Reign, together compose the whole
counsel of God, - [i.e., the gospel of Gods grace and also truths
relative to the kingdom, Acts 20: 24-27] -
involving and embodying all revelation, but especially the seed sent forth
since Pentecost.]
Four groups, and
four only - four is the world-number - cover the whole of humanity; and the
first is soil which rejects the seed in toto ;
the hard, trampled, exposed pathway on which some of the seed falls; and since no
seed germinates in it, it is all Scripture-hearers or Scripture-readers
that are lost. Those by the wayside are they that have heard -
the Word of God has reached them: then cometh the
devil and taketh away the word from their heart, THAT THEY MAY NOT BELIEVE AND BE SAVED (Luke 8: 12). No revealed truth whatever enters such hearts:
therefore no saving truth: therefore all such souls are lost. So we are left with a second tremendous truth:- that mans heart, without the Holy Scriptures, is -
Godward - perfectly barren.
The next two
groups cover a vast section of those who hear the truth and believe it; living
plants, made alive by the germinated seed; yet, in the harvest, both these
groups are found without fruit. Ή The first reads like a photograph. They that have
been sown upon the rocky places, when they have heard the word, straightway
receive it with joy; and they have no root in themselves, but endure for a
while; then, when tribulation or persecution ariseth
because of the word, - [i.e. the message about the kingdom
(Matt. 13: 19, N.I.V.] - straightway THEY STUMBLE* (Mark 4: 16). The particular truth, or truths, has never taken
root. They have not root in
themselves; that is, the defect is in them: either
they never mastered the truths [of the messianic
kingdom which] they have now abandoned - there was no depth of conviction;
or else their own characters are feeble and volatile, and what they once
grasped with joy they now relax in gloom. Their root is in a favourable environment,
not in themselves; in excitement, in Christian encouragement, in prosperity. Paul sketches similar characters:- Tossed to and fro and carried
about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men - the
jugglery of controversial conjurors in
craftiness, after the wiles of error (Eph.
4: 14). Probably tens of
thousands of [regenerate] believers to-day (including Modernists, though by no means
Modernists alone) can say with a church member known to the writer:- I have lost all my beliefs
except belief in my Saviour: all the lovely early bloom, in its joyous
springtime, had - as the Saviour says - withered.* And the
reason is given. When tribulation - the word derives from the threshing-roller,
the sifting of wheat (Luke 22: 31) or persecution ariseth because
of the word - unpopularity, or
even danger, of the truth straigtway he stumbleth (Matt.
13: 21). The stumbler in the race is the runner who loses the prize.
Obedience is always costly and the
greater the obedience the greater the cost. So it is the warning of Hebrews (2: 1):
Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to
the things that were heard lest haply we drift away front them."
[Ή Since fruitbearing
and reward,
and not the receiving of a free gift of eternal life, is the subject matter before us; the gospel of
the
grace of God is nowhere in view: works are predominant throughout! Failure by those who recognise this fact, and neglect
to point it out to others, can only reveal a certain disregard for their
spiritual welfare by underestimating the importance of our Lords teaching.]
[* Professor
William James, quoting the letter of a correspondent, gives (in his Varieties
of Religious Experience) an example that could be indefinitely
multiplied. His correspondent describes
how a living faith which had been a tower of strength and a well of life to him, gradually left him. "A blank was
there, he writes, instead of it. I couldn't find anything. Now, at the age of nearly fifty, my power of
getting into connection with it has entirely left me; and I have to confess
that a great help has gone out of my life. Life has become curiously dead and
indifferent. All apostates fall under this heading,
whether temporary like Peter, or permanent like Judas.]
The third group is
no less intensely realistic. They that are sown among the thorns are they that have heard
the word, and the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the
lusts of other things entering in - after the Word has sprung with
lovely promise choke the word - the
old convictions survive, but become inoperative: Wickliffe translates it, strangle it and it
becometh unfruitful (Mark 4: 19).
It becometh unfruitful,
for in early stages there was fruit: absorbing anxieties, or else
worldly success, or else the passion for other things - and there are a
thousand such - than the coming of the King and the Kingdom, bring it about
that the grain never ripens. The
second group were fruitless through external difficulties - unpopularity,
ostracism, even danger to life: the third group, through internal passions -
anxiety, covetousness, and countless other lusts.* In the words of Havelock, when criticized for
his religious convictions:- I humbly trust I shall
not change my opinions and practice, though it rains garters and coronets as
the reward of apostasy. It is
the warning of John:- Look to
yourselves, that ye lose not things which ye have wrought, -
the lovely fruits of springtime but that ye
receive a full reward (2 John 8).
[* The love of money is the root - here is one thorn-root of all kinds of evil, which some reaching after have been led
astray from the faith and have pierced themselves through with
many sorrows (1 Tim. 6: 10) - here
are the thorns.]
Whether or not we
may press the numerical proportions given in the Parable it is impossible to
say; but it is at least very suggestive that, in our Lords statement, only
one in, every four who hears, and only one in every three who believes, bears
fruit. Christian fruit - another
enormous lesson of the parable - is simply Scripture reproduced in life. That in the good
ground, these are such as in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold
it fast - the Greek word implies so holding a thing that it
does not run away from us: truth can be slippery and
BRING FORTH FRUIT with patience (Luke
8: 15). If we do not grasp the
truth, and retain it, it passes: but truth retained in unencumbered soil,
infallibly fruits. These neither misconceive the true genius and character of
the Gospel calling, as a scheme of discipline and probation, by which virtue is
to be made perfect through suffering, like converts of the second class: nor
shrink from its personal duties, and give it a secondary place in their
thoughts and affections, like those of the third: but are ready to endure all
things, even the loss of life; and ready to sacrifice all things, even
themselves, their dearest appetites and passions (Greswell).
So now we see in
all its clearness, the priceless facts which our Lord unfolds. (1) The reaction of the soil to the seed is a
perfect revelation of the soil: no test for analyzing character is more subtle
or more searching than our reaction to the Word of God. It is only the burning conviction that
creates the glowing life. (2) The seed is received as each man has ears to hear
(Alford). The only seed is the Word of
God; and each seed - that is, each Scriptural truth - bears its own fruit,
fruit which is impossible if that particular truth is not planted in the mind.
A seed may be more, or less, vigorous,
and therefore more, or less, fruitful - that is, a truth, equally accepted by
different believers, may have widely different effects; but also, as covering
the whole ground, the fewer seeds accepted, the narrower the harvest. It is the amount of truth we absorb, and
the amount of truth we retain, that decides our harvest. Simple, saving truth produces simple,
elementary salvation; but Gods Word is a vast mass of sixty-six books, and each
truth produces a fruitfulness of its own. Therefore (3) the glorious fact
stands forth that, as that life will be fullest of fruit whose heart is
fullest of scripture - Scripture first studied, then believed, then practised -
so complete fruitfulness is made possible for every believer - a hundredfold,
not thirtyfold - by complete obedience to all
Scripture. All of us can become living epistles.
So we reach the
vital point. What controls our reception of the seed? The Lord says nothing of subtlety of
intellect, or depth of learning: for appropriating divine truth the qualities
are not mental at all, but moral. Such as in AN HONEST AND GOOD HEART
hold it fast (Luke 8: 15).
It is a
description, says Greswell, familiar to classical readers as the received formula among
the Greeks for moral excellence. The first quality, honesty,
means straight vision, an mediate acceptance of unpalatable truth, a refusal
to have any axe to grind, perfect openness; our Saviours single eye which is consequently full of light. The second quality, goodness is a heart bent on all that is right and
divine. The
expression an honest and good heart conveys to us the idea of ingenuousness, nobleness of
purpose, united with goodness (Alford). Our character and life are ultimately the sole
evidence of a good and honest heart; and the highest holiness is the closest
incarnation of the Book. Therefore the
golden words of President Woodrow Wilson to all sowers:
- Give men the Bible unadulterated, pure, unaltered, uncheapened, and then see it work its wholesome work
through the whole nature. It forms a part of the warp and woof of mans life.
For the soil does not change the seed,
except to develop it; but the seed does the miracle - it turns dust into fruit.
-------