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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
1. Several things are to be observable; as,
1. How Christ begins and ends the parable with an admonition to diligent and serious attention. Hearken, says Christ, verse 3. and he that hath ears to hear, let him hear, verse 9. This shows us at once the people's backwardness and negligence in applying their minds to hear and receive the word of God, and also shows the minister's duty to excite and stir up their people's diligence and attention in hearing God's word.
Observe, 2. What is the general scope and design of this parable; namely, to show that there are four several sorts of hearers of God's word, and but one good one, but one sort only who hear to saving advantage.
Now as to the matter of the parable.
Note, 1. The sower is Christ and his apostles; he the principal sower, they the subordinate seedsmen. Christ sows his own field, his ministers sow his field. He sows his own seed, they his seed. Woe unto us if we sow our own seed, not Christ's.
Note, 2. The seed sown, the word of God: fabulous legends and unwritten traditions, which the seedsmen of the church of Rome sow, these are not seed, but chaff, or their own seed, and not Christ's. Our Lord's field must be all sown with his own seed, with no mixt grain.
Learn, 1. That the word preached is like seed sown in the furrows of the field. As seed has a fructifying virtue in it, by which it increases and brings forth more of its own kind, so has the word of God a quickening power to regenerate and make alive dead souls.
Learn, 2. From this parable, that the seed of the word, where it is most plentifully sown, is not alike fruitful. Seed doth not thrive in all ground alike, neither doth the word fructify alike in the souls of men. There is a difference both from the nature of the soil and from the influence of the Spirit. For though no ground be naturally good, yet some is worse than other.
Learn, 3. That the cause of the word's unfruitfulness is very different; not the same in all. In some it is an hard heart to unbelief, in others the distracting cares of the world choke the word: like thorns which hinder the corn's growth, by overshadowing it, by drawing away the moisture and heart of the earth from it, and by hindering the influence of the sun from cherishing it. Unto which may be added the policy of Satan, that bird of prey, which follows God's plough, and steals away the precious seed of the word out of the furrows of their souls.
Learn, 4. That the best ground doth not bring forth increase alike. Some good ground brings forth more, others less; some thirty, some sixty, some an hundred-fold. In like manner, a person may be a profitable hearer of the word, although he doth not bring forth so great a proportion of fruit as others, provided he brings forth as much as he can.