Matthew 13:4

Some seeds fell by the wayside, and the fowls came and devoured them up.

Way seed devoured by birds

The birds devour the truth we neglect to cover. Let us study these birds:-

1. The first belongs to the heron species, having long legs, a long bill, broad strong wings, and an eye keen as an eagle’s, yet filmy at times, which causes serious mistakes. This is the bird of intellectual scepticism. It delays your acceptance of the truth with all kinds of questions.

2. There is another bird of dirty and ruffled feathers, a nondescript, but a hearty eater of the seed dropped by the wayside. It is evil associations. They neutralize the influences of the Spirit of God.

5. There is the muscular bird with curved beak that holds like a vice. It is a moth eater of the falcon order, and ravenous, evil habits, and belongs to a large family.

4. There is a bird of bad odour. Carrion drops from feather and from bill. It i; of the buzzard tribe. Let us call it the inconsistencies of Christian professors.

5. There is a dull and heavy bird, not easily seared away, of the booby order. It is religious indecision. All these hinder our salvation. (T. E. Brown, D. D.)

The seed by the wayside

The truth described as a “seed.” There are manifold facilities about the emblem on which we may dwell. The seed has a germinating power in itself that leads to endless reproduction. So has every true word. Then man is but the soil. If you are to get Divine desires in the human heart, they must be sown there: they are not products of the soil. Again, man’s part is accurately described as a simple reception, not passive, but a co-operation. Then these different kinds of soil are not unalterably different: it is an acquired disposition, not a natural characteristic that is spoken of.

I. The beaten path.

II. The lost seed.

I. Let us think about that type of character which is here set forth under the image of “the wayside.” It is a heart trodden down by the feet that have gone across it; and because trodden down, incapable of receiving the seed sown. The seed falls upon, not in it. Point out ways in which the heart is trodden down.

1. By custom and habit. The process of getting from childhood to manhood is a process of getting less impressible.

2. The heart is trodden down by sin. It is an effect of sin that it uniformly works in the direction of unfitting men to receive God’s love. Every transgression deprives us, in some degree, of power to receive God’s truth, and make it our own.

3. The heart is trodden down, so far as receiving the gospel is concerned, by the very feet of the sower. Every sermon an ungodly man hear, which leaves him ungodly, leaves him harder by the passage of the Word once more across his heart.

II. The lost seed. Satan’s chosen instruments are those light, swift-winged, apparently innocent flocks of flying thoughts, that come swooping across your souls, even whilst the message of God’s love is sounding in your ears. (A. Maclaren D. D.)

Hardened by sin

Every transgression deprives us, in some degree, of power to receive the Divine word of God’s truth, and making it our own. And these demons of worldliness, of selfishness, of carelessness, of pride, of sensuality, that go careering through your soul, my brother, are like the goblin horseman in the old legend; wherever that hoof-fall strikes, the ground is blasted, and no grass will grow upon it any more for ever! (A. Maclaren D. D.)

Hardened by habit

The best way of presenting before you what I mean will be to take a plain illustration. Suppose a little child, just beginning to open its eyes and unfold its faculties upon this wonderful world of ours. There you get the extreme of capacity for receiving impressions from without, the extreme of susceptibility to the influences that come upon it. Tell the little thin; some trifle that passes out of your mind; you forget all about it; but it comes out again m the child weeks and weeks afterwards, showing how deep a mark it has made. It is the law of the human nature that, when it is beginning to grow it shall be soft as wax to receive all kinds of impressions, and then that it shall gradually stiffen and become hard as adamant to retain them. The rock was once all fluid, and plastic, and gradually it cools down into hardness. If a finger-dint had been put upon it in the early time, it would have left a mark that all the forces of the world could not make nor can obliterate now. In our great museums you see stone slabs with the marks of rain that fell hundreds of years before Adam lived; and the footprint of some wild bird that passed across the beach in those old, old times. The passing shower and the light foot left their prints on the soft sediment; then ages went on, and it has hardened into stone; and there they remain and will remain for evermore. That is like a man’s spirit; in the childish days so soft, so susceptible to all impressions, so joyous to receive new ideas, treasuring them all up, gathering them all into itself, retaining them all for ever. And then, as years go on, habit, the growth of the soul into steadiness and power, and many other reasons beside, gradually make us less and less capable of being profoundly and permanently influenced by anything outside us; so that the process from childhood to manhood is a process getting less impressible. (A. Maclaren D. D. )

The seed sown on the wayside

I. What is the wayside?

1. The wayside hearers are such as are unploughed, unbroken up by the cutting energy of the law.

2. It is trampled upon by every passer by. The want of “understanding” lies in this: that they do not see their own connection with the Word.

II. What is the seed? No matter where the seed fell, in itself it was always good; that which fell on the wayside was the same ,us that which fell on good ground. Thus the blame of man’s condemnation is in himself. The seed is the Word of God.

III. What are the disadvantages; which prove fatal to its being received at all?

1. The hardness of the ground.

2. The active agents of evil which were near at hand snatched it away. You give no advantage to the devil which is not immediately seized by him. (P. B. Power, M. A.)

The seed and the husk

Christ is the living seed, and the Bible is the husk that holds it. The husk that holds the seed is the most precious thing in the world, next after the seed that it holds. (W. Arnot.)

The Word falling on the external senses

Falling only upon the external senses, they are swept off by the next current; as the solid grain thrown from the sower’s hand rattles on the smooth hard roadside, and lies on the surface till the fowls carry it away. (W. Arnot.)

Unskilful sowing fruitful

if the seed is good, and the ground well prepared, a very poor and awkward kind of sowing will suffice. Seed flung in anyn fashion into the soft ground will grow: whereas, if it fall on the wayside,it will bear no fruit, however artfully it may have been spread. My latimer was a practical and skilful agriculturist. I was wont, when very young, to follow his footsteps into the field, further and oftener than was convenient for him or comfortable for myself. Knowing well how much a child is gratified by being permitted to imitate a man’s work, he sometimes hung the seed-bag, with a few handfuls in it, upon nay shoulder, and sent me into the field to sow. I contrived in some way to throw the grain away, and it fell among the clods. But the seed that fell from an infant’s hands, when it fell in the right place, grew as well and ripened as fully as that which had been scattered by a strong and skilful man. In like manner, in the spiritual department, the skill of the sower, although important in its own place, is, in view of the final result, a subordinate thing. The cardinal points are the seed and the soil. In point of fact, throughout the history of the Church, while the Lord has abundantly honoured His own ordinance of a standing ministry, He has never ceased to show, by granting signal success to feeble instruments, that results in His work are not necessarily proportionate to the number of talents employed. (W. Arnot.)

The wayside hearer

The proposals made to the wayside hearer suggest nothing at all to him. His mind throws off Christ’s offers as a slated roof throws off hail. You might as well expect seed to grow on a tightly-braced drum-head as the Word to profit such a hearer; it dances on the hard surface, and the slightest motion shakes it off. (Marcus Dods.)

What can we do with the trodden path?

May it not be possible to do as the farmer would do, if he had some piece of field across which men and animals were constantly passing? May we not pray for ability to put some sort of hurdles across, to prevent the mere animal portion of our life, whether of pleasure or business, or of our own animal passions, from crushing the spiritual life, and prevent us from giving earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. (Robert Barclay.)

No time for understanding

“How is it, my dear,” inquired a schoolmistress of a little girl, “that you do not understand this simple thing? … I do not know, indeed,” she answered, with a perplexed look; “ but I sometimes think I have so many things to learn that I have not the time to understand.” Alas! there may be much hearing, much reading, much attendance at public services, and very small result; and all because the Word was not the subject of thought, and was never embraced by the understanding. What is not understood is like meat undigested, more likely to be injurious than nourishing. (C. H. Spurgeon.)