This is very receptive soil but it is very shallow, maybe only an inch or two in places, and this is a picture of people who, when they hear the gospel don’t have much of a struggle with it. They believe it. Maybe this is someone who has a sort of Christian culture in their background, a Christian home. For that reason this message is not offensive to them, as it is to some people. Or maybe they are emotionally very impressionable, ready to respond, easily moved. The message appeals; there are certain benefits in becoming a Christian which are attractive; some religion dispels the fear of death, pacifies the conscience. He finds repentance easy, because everything is done at a superficial level, but we cannot repent if we have never been ashamed at our sin. He responds easily because he doesn’t realise what it is about. After a while, though he seems to make progress, he gives up. He doesn’t really know Christ.
You approve of this message and you assent to it. I accept this; I assent to this. But you have never actually been converted. You have just assented; it was easy for you. You have never been through a struggle. You have never said, ‘Do you mean to say that I am a sinner against God, that I have got to repent of these sins and I have got to pray to God to have them taken out of my life and part with them, that I am somebody who deserves to die?’
The stony ground hearer may talk a lot about religion – we think of Bunyan’s Talkative. Talk is easy, and in the right company it is appreciated. But Bunyan shows how to deal with Talkative.
Sometimes people have held campaigns, and, perhaps unwisely, they have preached the gospel and said to people, ‘Now put up your hands if you want to receive Christ; walk to the front’, and some people have been very effective with this, and hundreds of people have walked to the front of great meetings. Very, very few of them have kept it up. What happened? They were rocky ground hearers, people who were ready to listen for something good, something that was in their interests. ‘Oh, if I listen to this message and come to God, I shall be happy and I shall go to heaven, and God will help me. God will help me pass my exams; God will be get a good career; God will help me to get a good marriage.’ That's all good, but they have never really repented of sin. They were never really seeking a new life, to live for God, to be made holy, to be changed. They didn't want the Lord; they just wanted to be happy, and successful, and to have heaven. That’s not the same. As soon as the first tests came: somebody curled the lip and said with scorn, ‘You did what? You received Christ? You became a Christian? What a fool you are! ‘Ah’, they said, ‘I am going to be disliked for this. I am going to be laughed at for this by some people. I might lose some friends for this.’ They couldn't take that. As soon as the sun came up they withered away, and stopped attending, because they were after something for themselves, not repentance, forgiveness, and the Lord. That's the picture of the stony ground hearer. True conversion is a matter of deep repentance that breaks up the stony ground below.