James Nisbet Commentary - Luke 8:8 - 8:8

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James Nisbet Commentary - Luke 8:8 - 8:8


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

AN HONEST AND GOOD HEART

‘And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold.’

Luk_8:8

The parable comes to tell us that once more Christ the great Sower is sowing the seed of His Word in our hearts, and that if we have not hitherto borne fruit as we ought, we may turn over a new leaf and begin to do better. The parable tells us two things.

I. What God expects of us.—This is the first thing. It tells us that God expects fruit at our hands. The good ground brought forth an hundredfold. If we are good Christians, good hearers of God’s Word, if we come to church and go away again in the spirit that we ought, then we shall be bringing forth fruit an hundredfold. Everybody in this church who is not bringing forth fruit an hundredfold is not a good hearer. He is not receiving the Word into an honest and good heart. This is the first part of what the parable tells you. If you are an honest hearer you are bringing forth fruit an hundredfold. Now everybody likes to consider himself honest. A man will be ready to say a good many hard things against himself. A man will be ready to say he is quick-tempered, or careless, or thoughtless, or a ‘little wild.’ All these things people will be ready to say against themselves; but I never yet knew a man who would not be in a passion if I said to him he was not an honest-hearted man. And yet what does God say to you here? He says that if you are an honest-hearted man you are bringing forth fruit an hundredfold in return for the seed of His Word and Gospel.

II. Christ the great Sower finds out if we are not bringing forth an hundredfold.—Some I trust may be. God knows, and man does not. But many—very many of us—are not doing so, and the question is—why not? Why are we not honest-hearted? What is the matter with us, that prevents us dealing fairly by God and His Word? The parable tells us the various kinds of things which prevent men dealing fairly by God. It tells us the things that make us dishonest towards God, and which make our coming to church and hearing His Word no good to us or anybody else.

Illustration

‘When you sow corn you expect it will grow corn. You don’t sow wheat for it to lie in the ground and never grow up; and you don’t sow wheat and expect when it grows up you will reap barley. You expect to reap wheat when you sow wheat, and you expect to reap a great deal more than you sowed, or else where was the good of sowing? The harvest is of the same kind as the seed, and a great deal more of it: that is what we have to look to in the parable; and that is what we are meant to look to in ourselves. When God says He expects fruit of us, He means that He expects us to take home to ourselves what he puts into our hearts, and to keep it there, like the earth holds the seed, and then to go and produce the same kind of thing over again in our own lives that he puts into us by His teaching. God puts His Word into our hearts, and if our hearts are honest there are two things that we shall do: we shall keep His Word in our minds, and we shall produce its like over again, both in our characters and in our actions.’