Mark 4:15

15 Sometimes the teaching falls on the road. This is like the people who hear the teaching of God, but Satan quickly comes and takes away the teaching that was planted in them.

Mark 4:15 Meaning and Commentary

Mark 4:15

And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown,
&c.] Such hearers are represented by the way side, in which the seed fell; who, coming where the Gospel is preached, stop awhile and hear it, and so are only casual and accidental hearers of it:

but when they have heard;
and indeed whilst they are hearing, and before they are well got out of the place of hearing,

Satan cometh immediately and taketh away the word that was sown in
their hearts.
The devil, signified by the fowl, or fowls of the air, immediately takes notice of such hearers, and is very busy with them; filling their minds with other things suitable to their dispositions, and setting before them other objects, whereby their minds are, at once, taken off from what they have been hearing; so that all that they have observed, and laid up in their memories, is lost at once, and never thought of any more.

Mark 4:15 In-Context

13 Then Jesus said to his followers, "Don't you understand this story? If you don't, how will you understand any story?

14 The farmer is like a person who plants God's message in people.

15 Sometimes the teaching falls on the road. This is like the people who hear the teaching of God, but Satan quickly comes and takes away the teaching that was planted in them.

16 Others are like the seed planted on rocky ground. They hear the teaching and quickly accept it with joy.

17 But since they don't allow the teaching to go deep into their lives, they keep it only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the teaching they accepted, they quickly give up.