Hardened Hearers

Even people who sit under the preaching of God’s Word every week are capable of hardening their hearts against the truth they hear. Today, Sinclair Ferguson issues a solemn warning from Jesus’ parable of the sower.

This week on Things Unseen, our theme is take heed, take care how you hear. Yesterday, I mentioned the hearers’ grid that William Perkins, the great early English preacher-theologian, employed and thinking about the different kinds of hearers who listened to him. But a greater than William Perkins also had a hearers’ grid, didn’t He? And you are familiar with it, I’m sure. It’s the parable of the sower.

Jesus’ story about the farmer, the seed, and the soils is told in each of the first three Gospels. And Jesus hints that it’s really the parable of parables. Remember how He says in Mark 4:13 that if the disciples didn’t understand this parable, they’d never understand the other ones. So, it’s as if He’s saying: “This parable is the key. If you can’t follow it and apply it, then it’s clear that you’re not yet hearing properly.”

Well, you know the parable. It portrays a commonplace scene in rural Palestine in the day of our Lord Jesus. It’s seed sowing time. The farmer goes out into his field with his basket of seed, and he starts sowing. The same farmer, the same quality of seed, but the results vary considerably. And as Jesus explains, this is a picture of the Word of God being sown by Himself, of course, in His preaching, and then in the preaching of His disciples. Same preachers, same Word preached, but there are significant differences in what happens next. And these differences are all related to the condition of the soil into which the same quality of seed has been sown—that is, on the spiritual condition of those of us who hear the Word of God.

And in Jesus’ hearer’s grid, there are four different kinds of soil, four different kinds of hearers of the Word of God. The first one is pictured by the pathway. Some seed fell on the pathway, and the birds appeared. The seed has hardly touched the ground before the birds swoop down for their effortless fast food meal.

I imagine every minister has experienced preaching his heart out to his congregation, and then as he shakes hands at the door, he meets someone who makes it obvious that their hearts and minds were elsewhere during the sermon. Sometimes, it’s been clear already to the preacher. It’s surprising how many people forget that it’s a basic law of physics: if you can see the preacher; the preacher can see you. Well, this picture sometimes comes into my mind of the church doors opening just before the service ends and birds flying in to steal the seed of the Word of God that’s been expounded. It doesn’t even last long enough to get out of the church door. It makes no difference apparently to some hearers.

You know, I wonder if there’s a kind of subversive element in this parable—there often is in Jesus’ parables. And it’s this: Wasn’t the pathway the part of the field where the sower would’ve walked again and again carrying his seed? Was that what had hardened the soil? Since the seed had not penetrated the soil, every time the farmer went sowing, that ground was getting harder and harder until it became virtually impenetrable. It wasn’t that the farmer wasn’t there; it was that the farmer often walked there.

I suspect that’s true of some people. It’s not never hearing faithful preaching from the Bible that leads to complacency and indifference; it’s our detachment from the truth of God that leads us to being removed, distant from, perhaps even defending ourselves against the truth and its life-changing power. No, it’s that we’ve often heard the Word of God, but instead of responding to it and applying it to our lives, we’ve resisted it. And now, resisting it is of such second nature to us it takes no effort at all.

So, this parable is about hearing the Word of God, and it’s part of the Word of God. I wonder, are you a frequent listener to God’s Word but one whose heart is like the pathway? There needs to be some plowing done then, and we need to ask the Lord to break up that hard soil before it’s too late and even what we have disappears.