Waste.
The sower went out to sow, and, as he sowed, there was a great waste. Much precious seed fell, to his right hand and to his left, on ground unprepared to receive it. Ground hard as the nether millstone was one part of the surface on which the germ of food and life fell. It lay there for a few moments, more or less, but it sank not in, it found no receptive, no digestive, no assimilating power in the earth on which it lighted; it was caught away and devoured, and the act of sowing was all that it ever knew of a harvest.
I. The text teaches us to regard waste of all kinds as a great fault and sin. Wasted food, wasted money, wasted health, wasted time, wasted opportunities of doing and receiving good, these, in their several ways, are all sins against God and our own souls.
II. Observe that, sinful as waste of any kind is in us, there is in nature, in providence, in the spiritual world, a constant waste going on, suggesting much of anxious and painful wonder. In nature, might we not almost say that for one thing used, ten are wasted? for every seed brought to maturity in plant or tree, ten perish and are defeated? for every human body preserved through the accidents and risks of life to complete its term of earthly existence, ten fall prematurely into disease and decay, and are abruptly cut off from that amount of enjoyment and of usefulness which might seem, theoretically at least, to be the birthright and inheritance of all into whose nostrils has once been breathed the creative breath of life? Would we could stop here! would that we could ascribe only to that part of God's operations which we call nature, or at the utmost to that part of God's operations which we call providence, the manifestation of that principle of which we are speaking. But in the spiritual world also it is the saddest sight of all we seem to see it in its fullest development. How much of truth precious life-giving truth have we trifled away in our short lifetimes! Let us awake to a better appreciation of the gift of the Word of life, that we may at last hear unto profiting, and believe to the saving of our souls.
C. J. Vaughan, Memorials of Harrow Sundays,p. 304.
References: Mark 4:3. J. Keble, Sermons from Septuagesima to Ash-Wednesday,p. 151.Mark 4:3-9. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 50.