What is this a picture of? It is about the hardened heart. It is a picture of someone whose mind and heart is like a roadway. It is hardened down. There has been such traffic across your mind. Selfish thoughts, worldly thoughts, entertainment, enthusiasm for the things of this world entirely. Unbelieving thoughts, rebellious thoughts – this is like hundreds of people tramping to and fro across your mind and because these are your thoughts – ‘All for me, all for me, all for the present, all for the superficial things of life’ – your heart is hardened and the seed of the gospel just bounces along the surface. You are a young person maybe, and the little things of life – things you can have and touch and enjoy – that’s all that interests you when you have got any spare time. So the seed will never get in, and even if a seed were to penetrate, the devil sweeps it away from you in this manner. He gets us to say, ‘That’s ridiculous. What am I listening to this for? My friends don’t believe this. This is not for me.’ The voice of the preacher is still going on, but now something you were going to do this week pops into the mind, somebody you were going to see, something you are going to buy or enjoy.
The conscience may be hardened. The reminder of your sins ought to convict you, but you have been suppressing conscience for years, and you feel very little when reminded of what you have done. The world has taught you how to think, and you find reassurance from being with so many others like yourself. We live just on the pathway of life, influenced by the traffic of human ideas, following the crowd and fashions, in a crowd of friends all the time, struggling to keep up to date, constantly debating every latest thing, no self-control, but vulnerable to every temptation that enters the mind.
When the gospel is preached, do you listen, or are you switched off, or are kind of half-listening? You can hear, yet nothing is penetrating. Why? Well, maybe the preacher is boring, that would be sad! Maybe you are exceptionally tired. But maybe it’s because it doesn’t bother you. You are not interested. Now listen, this is what Christ has to say about you, if this is the case. You are like the seed falling on a hardened pathway. People walk along there all the time. Carts are trundled along there and the earth is packed down hard and the seed cannot get into it or germinate. It just bounces along the surface. You say, ‘This message means little to me because I am a strong person; I don’t need religion.’ No, it is because you are a sucker for this world.
Is that you? Satan is making a fool of you! The world is making a fool of you! You are not standing back and processing anything like you may think you are. ‘I am going to compare material things and spiritual things. I am going to weigh them up.’ No, you are not doing that. Satan has got you all wrapped up, unheeding, unhearing. This message is despised by the great ones of this world who think it is beneath them. This includes some very clever people by this world’s standards, yet they are thoughtless about God. Religion is beneath them: something primitive. They have out-grown the need for it. You may be very intelligent – the devil has turned you into a simpleton. He is shutting you off from an entire dimension of life, and you don’t think about it; you don’t hear your need of salvation or this message at all. You are completely indifferent. Well, pray to God: ‘Oh, Lord, stir my heart; wake me up; enable me to hear; help me.’ If necessary, say like some people have, ‘Oh, Lord, if you are there … give me a jolt, help me to realise the real context of life and what this is all about. Make me serious.’ Pray earnestly!
I was reading the testimony of a young man, how we came to Christ, a while ago, and he was in his early twenties. He grew up in a Christian home; we went to church in childhood to please his parents. He was bored stiff; he never listened; he paid no attention. Actually, just because his parents wanted him to go, he dragged himself out of go with them in the car to a conference; he wasn't the slightest bit interested in any of it. Halfway through the conference he slipped out of the church just to get some air. He went out of the porch – it was in a provincial town – and there he ran into another person who was taking some air outside, just for few minutes relief. The other person was an older man, an earnest believer. ‘What you doing out here?’ he said. And the young man said, ‘To be honest, I'm not the slightest bit interested.’ So this old man spoke to him, and challenged him, and suddenly something happened in this young man's mind, which had never happened in all the years and the hours of listening to a preacher in the pulpit. He was touched by something that was said to him, and he realised he had great spiritual need, and he should listen, and he went back in for the last session, and he hung on every word. In that moment he'd been changed: every word that was spoken was vital to him, and he followed it as though he had never heard any of this before. That is what happens when God is at work in the heart.
Can a believer, somebody who is truly converted, resemble in any way the hardened heart of the wayside hearer, where the gospel can't take root in that heart because like a pathway it's hard? The devil knows that he can take the word away from you as quickly as you hear it. You've been to church, you’ve heard the gospel, and within moments of being outside it's all gone, wiped from your mind. Can this happen to believer? Yes, there some who have stopped listening to the word for their progress, for their sanctification. The teaching ministry has no great interest to them. They still read the Bible at home to some extent, but they read it quickly – ‘Yes, I've seen that before.’ It’s not convicting them; it doesn't thrill their souls any more. Though you are converted, surprisingly, you've come to resemble the hardened pathway hearer. Your case is desperate; you could be heading for a great fall. They probably attend far fewer Bible studies, far fewer gatherings. They make excuses easily. Pray that you will be moved once again, that the Spirit of God will take your heart.