But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Matthew 13:8.

What an encouragement it is that the sower is not always to meet with disappointment. The seed is sometimes received into honest hearts. The hearers comprehend the truth and do not resist the Holy Spirit or refuse to receive the impression of truth upon their hearts…. They receive the truth into the heart, and it accomplishes its transforming work upon the character. They are not able to change their own hearts, but the Holy Spirit, through their obedience to the truth, sanctifies the soul.

The good heart does not mean a heart without sin, for the gospel is to be preached to the lost. Jesus says, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Convicted sinners see themselves as transgressors in the great moral mirror, God’s holy law. They look upon the Savior upon the cross of Calvary and ask why this great sacrifice was made; and the cross points to the holy law of God, which has been transgressed. It was to save the transgressor from ruin that He who was coequal with God offered up His life on Calvary…. The law has no power to pardon the evil-doer; but Jesus has taken the sins of the transgressor upon Himself, and as a sinner exercises faith in Him as the sacrifice, Christ imputes His own righteousness to the guilty one. There has been but one way of salvation since the days of Adam. “There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” We have no reason to fear while we are looking to Jesus, believing that He is able to save all who come unto Him.

As the result of active faith in Christ we are brought into the moral warfare with the world, the flesh, and the devil. If we undertake this warfare in our own wisdom, our human ability, we shall certainly be overcome; but if we exercise living faith in Jesus, and practice godliness, we shall understand what it means to be sanctified through the truth, and we shall not be overcome in the conflict, for heavenly angels encamp around about us. Christ is the captain of our salvation. He it is who strengthens His followers for the moral conflict which they are pledged to undertake….

Those who open the Scriptures and feed upon the heavenly manna become partakers of the divine nature. They have no life or experience apart from Christ…. They know that in character they must be like Him with whom God is well pleased.—The Review and Herald, June 28, 1892.

From From the Heart

And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them. Matthew 13:7.

In the thorns that choke the good seed, the Great Teacher would depict the dangers that are around those who hear the Word of God; for there are foes on every hand to make of no effect the precious truth of God. All that draws the affections from God, all that fills the attention so that Christ has no room in the heart, must be renounced if the seed of truth is to flourish in the soul. Jesus specifies the things that are dangerous to the soul. He says the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desire for other things, choke the word, the growing spiritual seed, so that the soul does not draw nourishment from Christ, as does the branch from the vine, and the spiritual life dies from the heart. Love of the world, love of its pleasures and display, and love of other things keep the soul away from God; for those who love the world do not depend upon God for their courage, their hope, their joy. They know not what it is to have the joy of Christ, for this is the joy of leading others to the Fountain of life, of winning souls from sin to righteousness….

When those who have but a partial knowledge of the truth are called upon to study some point that cuts across their preconceived opinions, they are confused. Their preconceived opinions are as thorns that choke the Word of God, and when truth is sown, and it becomes necessary to root up the thorns to give it place, they feel that everything is going from them, and they are in trouble.

There are many who have but an imperfect understanding of the character of God. They think of Him as stern and arbitrary, and when the fact is presented that God is love, it is a difficult matter for these souls to lay aside their false conceptions of God. But if they do not let the Word of truth in, rooting out the thorns, the briers will start up afresh and choke out the good Word of God; their religious experience will be dwarfed, for the evil of their hearts will overtop the tender plant of truth, and shut away the spiritual atmosphere….

The law of God is the rule of God’s government, and through eternal ages it will be the standard of His kingdom…. If we do not yield to its requirements in this life, learning to love God with all our hearts and our neighbors as ourselves, we shall meet with no change in character at the appearing of Jesus.—The Review and Herald, June 21, 1892.

From From the Heart

Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. Matthew 13:5.

The seed sown upon stony ground finds little depth of soil in which to take root. The plants spring up quickly, but the tender roots cannot penetrate into the rock and find nutriment to sustain the growing plant, and it soon perishes. A large number who make a profession of religion may be represented by the stony-ground hearers. They are a class that are easily convinced, but they have only a superficial religion….

There are those who receive the precious truth with joy; they are exceedingly zealous, and express amazement that all cannot see the things that are so plain to them. They urge others to embrace the doctrine that they find so satisfying. They hastily condemn the hesitating and those who carefully weigh the evidences of the truth, and consider it in all its bearings…. But in the time of trial, these enthusiastic persons too often falter and fail….

As the roots of a plant strike down into the soil, gathering moisture and nutriment from the ground, so Christians must abide in Christ, drawing sap and nourishment from Him, as does the branch from the vine, until they cannot be turned away from the Source of their strength by trials….

Stony-ground hearers may rejoice for a season, for they think that religion is something that will free them from test and from all difficulty. They have not counted the cost….

The class that Jesus represents as stony-ground hearers trusted in their good works, in their good impulses, and were strong in themselves, in their own righteousness. They were not “strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.” They did not feel that eternal vigilance was the price of safety. They might have put on the whole armor of God, and have been able to stand against the wiles of the enemy. The rich and abundant promises of God were spoken for their benefit, and believing the Word of God, they might have been clothed with a “Thus saith the Lord” and been able to meet every wily device of the adversary; for when the enemy should come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord would have lifted up a standard against him.—The Review and Herald, June 7, 1892.

From From the Heart

A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell by the wayside. Luke 8:5.

The great controversy between Christ, the prince of light, and Satan, the prince of darkness, is presented before us in the parable of the sower….

The sower is the Son of God, or the one to whom He delegates His work, for by cooperating with Christ, we are to become laborers together with God. Those who by personal ministry open to others the Scriptures are sowing the good seed, for the good seed is the Word of God….

The seed sown by the wayside represents the word of God as it falls upon the heart of those who are inattentive hearers, for those who are to bring the fruit forth must meditate much upon the word of God which has been presented to them…. As the birds of the air are ready to catch up the seed from the wayside, so Satan is represented as ready with his unseen agencies of evil to catch away the seeds of divine truth from the heart, lest it should find a lodgment there and bring forth fruit unto eternal life….

Satan and his angels are in the assembly where the gospel of the kingdom is preached. While heavenly angels also are present to minister for those who shall be heirs of salvation, the enemy is ever on the alert that he may make of no effect the influence of the truth. With an earnestness that is only equaled by his malice, he seeks to thwart the operation of the Spirit of God on the heart of the hearer, for he sees that if the truth is accepted, he has lost control of his subject, and Christ has won the victory….

There are many whose hearts are as hard as the beaten pathway, and apparently it is a useless effort to present the truth to them; but while logic may fail to move, and argument be worthless to convince, let the laborer for Christ come close to such in Christlike sympathy and compassion, and it may be that the love of Christ will subdue and melt the soul into tenderness and contrition….

Through the years of probation, God is testing and proving the hearts of all, that it may be seen who will find room for Jesus. The question to be answered by every soul is, Will you accept the pardoning love of God, which is a remedy for the diseases of the soul, or will you choose the enmity of Satan, and reap the terrible doom of the lost?—The Review and Herald, May 31, 1892.

From From the Heart

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth. John 16:12, 13.

The Lord Jesus had precious truth to open before His disciples, but He could not unfold it to their minds until they were in a condition to comprehend the significance of what He desired to teach….

Though He unfolded great and wonderful things to the minds of His disciples, He left many things unsaid that could not be comprehended by them. At His last meeting with them before His death, He said, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” … Earthly ideas, temporal things, occupied so large a place in their minds, that they could not then understand the exalted nature, the holy character, of His kingdom, though He laid it out in clear lines before them. It was because of their former erroneous interpretation of the prophecies, because of human customs and traditions, presented and urged upon them by the priests, that their minds had become confused and were hardened to truth.

What was it that Jesus withheld because they could not comprehend it? It was the more spiritual, glorious truths concerning the plan of redemption. The words of Christ, which the Comforter would recall to their minds after His ascension, led them to more careful thought and earnest prayer that they might comprehend His words and give them to the world. Only the Holy Spirit could enable them to appreciate the significance of the plan of redemption. The lessons of Christ, coming to the world through the inspired testimony of the disciples, have a significance and value far beyond that which the casual reader of the Scriptures gives them. Christ sought to make plain His lessons by means of illustrations and parables. He spoke of the truths of the Bible as a treasure hid in a field, which, when a man had found, he went and sold all that he had, and bought the field. He represents the gems of truth, not as lying directly upon the surface, but as buried deep in the ground; as hidden treasures that must be searched for. We must dig for the precious jewels of truth, as a man would dig in a mine.

In presenting the truth to others, we should follow the example of Jesus.—The Review and Herald, October 14, 1890.

From From the Heart