Read and Believe in Jesus.

“.” Matthew

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REVIEW – Jesus began a season of speaking parables to the crowds instead of straight kingdom preaching. His reason? Israel did not WANT to hear, believe, and receive the kingdom of heaven that Jesus was offering. They wanted His physical healings, but weren’t interested in spiritual wholeness. They saw His miracles, but didn’t accept Him as their Messiah.

So, like the seed falling on hard-packed ground in the first parable, eaten by the birds before it could take root, Jesus’ clear preaching was taken away and replaced with parables to “tickle” their ears. Jesus told His disciples this was prophesied in Isaiah 6:9-10 as a judgment on Israel.

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The scary thing is that the Holy Spirit will only strive with people for so long; then a person’s heart will be TOO hardened to turn. (Genesis 6:3) God’s Spirit patiently convicts, warns, and pulls people toward repentance, but God does not let people persist in rebellion forever without consequence.

If you feel a heavy conviction or fear that God has stopped working in your life, the fact that you still care, feel a tug on your heart, or desire truth often shows the Spirit is still active and inviting you to turn to Him. “Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon him while He is near. (Isaiah 55:6)

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(In 13:16, Jesus tells His disciples that THEIR eyes “see” and their ears “hear,” so THEY are blessed! “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.” I would say that YOU and I are among those blessed like the disciples.)

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Matthew 13:24-30.

Then Jesus speaks another parable to the crowd, which He later explains to His disciples.

“The kingdom of heaven can be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.

While his men were sleeping (normal rest, not negligence), the farmer’s enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat (then went away).

All the plants came up and began to form heads of grain. (Wheat heads stand tall pointing towards the sky, while the “darnel” (weed) heads angle downward.)

The workers immediately saw the problem and went to the farmer. “Didn’t you sow good seeds? How then does the field also have weeds?”

“AN ENEMY HAS DONE THIS!”

“Should we go through and pull out the weeds and burn them?”

“No,” said the farmer, “for then the wheat will be rooted up too. Allow both to grow until harvest. Then go through, pull up the weeds first, and burn them. Then gather the wheat into my barn.”

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This parable also made no sense to the crowd, many of whom were farmers. They couldn’t believe that “the enemy” was “in” the kingdom of heaven. No, the Messiah would rule supreme. There would be no enemy in the true Messiah’s kingdom. (This Jesus didn’t know what he was talking about…)

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Matthew 13:31-35.

Then Jesus told two quick parables, again about things familiar to the people, but deceptively hard for them to understand.

First, His kingdom was like a tiny mustard seed. (Mustard seeds in the Middle East are black and about the size of grains of salt, not like the ones we see in our pickle jars.) When these seeds are planted in a garden, they grow very big, seeming like a tree compared to the garden herbs around it. The tree-plant is so large that “birds of the air” come and make nests in its branches.

Okay, the people “kind of” nodded. They’d seen how big the tiny mustard grows, and they’d probably seen how birds come and nest in it. (After all, mustard seed was often mixed with other grains and fed to pigeons!) But how does this “picture” the Messiah’s kingdom?

(Jesus is prophesying that His kingdom will grow from a small beginning and spread far, so Gentiles will be part of it. The term “birds of the air” often spoke of other nations around Israel. They would come into the kingdom and find security and sustenance too.

Nope, these Jews did NOT picture that!

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Second (and similar) is the parable about a portion of leaven that a woman worked into flour.

They’d all seen the result of that in their own kitchens. That bit of leaven caused the whole batch of dough to rise into many loaves of delicious bread.

So, duh, what’s the rest of the story? They are bewildered. And they disperse, scratching their heads. “What does He mean?”

Jesus did NOT mean for the leaven in this parable to represent sin, as it often does in the Bible. Like the other parables, it represents the kingdom of heaven and shows how it will start small and (eventually) spread from … Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria … to the uttermost parts of the world.

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Matthew 13:36-43.

Later, after Jesus left the crowds, He and the disciples went into the house where they were staying.

“Explain to us the parable of the seeds of the field,” they asked. And Jesus did.

“Once again, the farmer (sower) is Jesus, and the field is the world.

But this time, the good seed is “the sons of the kingdom,” while the weeds are “the sons of the evil one.” The enemy who sowed the weeds is the devil.

The harvest is the close of the age; the reapers are angels.

Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send His angels, and they will gather all who cause sin and all lawbreakers out of His kingdom and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Then the righteous will shine like the sun in their Father’s kingdom.”

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“He who has ears, let him hear.”

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