The First Soil

Matthew 13:18-19 (NIV)
18 “Listen then to what the parable of the sower means:
19 When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path.

This first kind of individual has a heart that is hard and narrow like a path beaten across a field. A path is trodden down and hardened and narrowed by the traffic of human feet as they cross the field. The problem with this heart is that it has grown hard and narrow.

Jesus focuses upon that which causes it. The word comes, he says, but they do not understand it. The idea is not that they could not understand, but that they do not try. They do not take the time to understand.

What kind of a heart is this?

You can see that this is what we might call the materialistic heart, the kind that does not want to be bothered with thinking about anything beyond what you can see and hear and smell and touch and taste.

This is the humanistic heart, the liberal heart, or the atheistic.

Here is a man who has been rendered momentarily thoughtful by the word of the kingdom. Something has challenged him for the moment to think about God, and about life. And for a moment he wonders, "Maybe there is something to this." He has received a passing impression—but it requires more thought, more self-evaluation—and he does not want to be bothered. Therefore, he shrugs it off. And, immediately, the Lord says, the enemy comes, i.e. Satan, the evil one, and snatches away the thought out of his heart, and it never comes back again.

So he goes on untroubled, thinking that the world remains the way he has conceived it to be. There are many people like this, who live on these terms.

There are many people like that, They have settled for a world bounded on the north by their work, on the south by their family, on the east by taxes, and on the west by death.

That is their entire life to them.

When the word of the kingdom falls upon that kind of heart, it causes a momentary impression. However, it is immediately shrugged off because it is different, it is challenging, and it awakens the possibility of an entire world he has never thought of. Therefore, he divests himself of it, and the enemy comes and takes it away and it is gone.

What kind of heart do you have? Is it soft and receptive to God and His Word?

Ref: Post of August 6, 2007

Don Howard
Auburn WA