Read and Believe in Jesus.

“Why do You speak to them in parables?” Matthew 13:10

.

.

REVIEW – Jesus confronted His adversaries with harsh teaching. The Pharisees’ hearts had hardened like stone, and now they only wanted to declare Him a fraud, even attributing His miracles to Beelzebul’s power. Jesus exposed the evil in their hearts, and they immediately demanded a sign of His authority. After all, they were the “Israel’s Teachers of the Law!

Jesus gave them the signs they should have known as teachers of the O.T.: the signs of Jonah, Nineveh, and the Queen of Sheba.

Then Jesus told the parable of a person freed of an unclean spirit, only to have seven worse spirits return to occupy him… because, after cleaning out the old, he had failed to fill it with “good.” Idolatry had been cleaned out of Israel in the exile, but now, the temple & worship of the LORD had been twisted by these self-righteous keepers of the law, who put weights of rules on the people that God never intended.

.

.

Matthew 13:1-3.

Later that same day, after confronting the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, Jesus went to the Sea and sat down. (Can’t you almost see him take a deep breath of the cool sea breeze and enjoy a few minutes with his disciples around Him, with only the regular sounds of boatyard business.)

But soon the crowds came again, and pressed in to hear Him or touch Him, so that He had to commandeer one of the boats to put some space between them. Then Jesus sat in the boat (perhaps with an anchor holding it a short way from the shore), while the great crowd stood along the beach. Imagine Jesus’ compassionate heart as he looked at all those expectant faces, each wanting something from Him.

,

,

Matthew 13:4-9.

Jesus then began to tell them the first of many parables of the kingdom of heaven. The parable of the Sower is perhaps the best known. Maybe Jesus was inspired by the hillside behind the standing crowd, light green with new shoots of barley or wheat. Lots of promise, but what would the harvest be?

“A sower went out to sow.

As he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them.

Other seeds fell on rocky ground where there was little soil, and they sprang up immediately because they had no depth to push through, but when the sun rose they were scorched, and because they had no root, they withered away.

Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.

Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty. ”

Then Jesus concluded this parable with, “He who has ears, let him hear.”

.

.

Skipping down to Matthew 12:18-23.

Here Jesus tells the meaning of that first parable of His kingdom, which the disciples didn’t even understand.

(The “sower” is the Lord Jesus, see 13:37, and the “seed” is the good Word of God, see Mark 4:14. The soil represents the hearts of those who hear the Word.)

The first hard-packed “path” soil represents those who hear the word of the kingdom but do not understand it (or do not want to). The devil comes along and snatches away even that little bit they heard.

The thin layer of soil atop rocks represents those who hear the “sweet” parts of the message and accept it with joy. But when tribulation or persecution comes (the hot sun, dry wind), they fall away because they have no “root” in the truth.

The thorny, weedy soil represents those who hear the message of the kingdom, but whose lives are so full of the ‘cares of the world’ and the ‘deceitfulness of riches’ that they pay no attention to the things of God. “I’ll look into that another day,” they think, but never do.

The good, fertile soil represents hearts open to the message and ready to receive it. They nurture, feed, and grow good grain, ready for abundant harvests.

.

.

Matthew 13:10-17.

“Yeah, okay, we knew that!” (cough, cough) said the disciples after Jesus explained the parable of the sower and the soil. (NOW they did!)

But they were curious. Jesus had taught the crowds plainly up until then. And He had taught them even more so, privately. So why was He talking in “riddles” now?

Turns out, the parables – those sweet stories we love to tell and illustrate in children’s books – were a JUDGMENT on the people. People, like the first soils who listened to Jesus because it was pleasant and because He healed them, weren’t interested in changed, fruitful lives.

The people “heard” Jesus speak but didn’t want to “hear” His message. These people “saw” His miracles, but didn’t “recognize” Him as their Messiah. And so, even Jesus’ clear preaching would be “taken away” and replaced with parables.

Then Jesus quotes Isaiah 6:9-10,

“You will indeed hear but never understand,

and you will indeed see but never perceive.

For this people’s heart has grown dull,

and with their ears they can barely hear,

and their eyes they have closed,

lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears,

and understand with their heart,

and TURN,

and I would heal them.”

Then Jesus turns to His own disciples (and to us who are reading this with love for Him in our hearts) and says,

“Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”

.

How blessed we are!!