12 Those by the wayside are the ones who hear; then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.
8:12
Those by the wayside are the ones who hear; then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.
Verse 12, or the first soil, represents those who never come to believe in Christ’s message. Christ offers comfort to the second and third soils, but not the first, which indicates that people who represent the soils of cases two and three are believers.
The seed beside the road represents those deceived by the devil. He takes God’s Word from their hearts. These people hear, but they do not believe it because they are deceived. They fall away to the point of outright rejection of the Word. They reach a point where they do not exercise faith whatsoever. People with biblical faith never lose their faith. A flippant faith that does not grasp the soul is not genuine.
Faith is the means whereby salvation comes to the individual. The seed takes no root in their lives and bears no fruit.
PRINCIPLE:
A person with a shut mind refuses to embrace the Word in their lives.
APPLICATION:
Some unbelievers engage with the Bible on a surface level. They become vulnerable to the devil, who will attack their inadequate understanding of the Word of God. They are left exposed to deception from the devil and from embracing Jesus as their Savior.
