Matthew 13:1-23
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. 2 Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. 3 Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.”
10 The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”
11 He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heavenhas been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables:
“Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
15 For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’[a]
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
15 For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’[a]
16 But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. 17 For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.
18 “Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: 19 When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil onecomes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. 20 The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. 21 But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. 22 The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. 23 But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”
Questions:
ReplyDelete- What does good soil look like? Should it be expected that we will have some thorns in our soil, or are you either thorny soil or good soil?
- Why did Jesus speak to the people in parables? It sounds like Jesus doesn't want to meet people more than half way. Is that true? What does His answer mean?
- Jesus mentioned that whoever has will be given more, and whoever doesn't have will have what little they have taken away. What about spiritual wealth distribution? Why do the rich get richer while the poor get poorer?
https://bible.org/seriespage/3-four-soils-matthew-131-23-mark-41-20-luke-81-15 says:
ReplyDeleteBut just like when you plant actual seeds into the ground, the message of the kingdom will grow gradually. We don’t plant a seed and see a plant the next day. True growth takes time. And sometimes when we plant seeds, we see different kinds of things that actually grow. Some trees produce fruit; some plants produce vegetables. Some produce lots of fruit, and some produce little. Even the soil that produces a small crop is “good.”
The spiritual fruit that comes from God’s Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, forgiveness, healing, righteousness, glory, grace, compassion, knowledge and truth. Another fruit is sharing God’s truth with others. So the test for good “heart soil” is checking to see whether there is any of this fruit in your life.
It is interesting to note that a plant does not “decide” when to bear fruit. It just happens. In the same way, we can’t “decide” when we’re going to bear spiritual fruit. Fruit comes naturally when we remain connected to the Vine. Jesus said, “I am the Vine. You are the branches. If anyone remains joined to me, and I to him, he will bear a lot of fruit. You can't do anything without Me.” (John 15:5) We must stay connected to Jesus, because without Him, we cannot bear any fruit!
We aren’t responsible to make the fruit. We are responsible to keep the soil in good condition. Good soil has sunlight, water, and nutrients. How do you think we can “water” and “fertilize” our hearts? Read God’s Word, listen to good teaching, pray, listen to God. (Jesus is the Light!) Good soil is also free of rocks and weeds. How can we keep rocks and weeds out of the soil of our hearts? We don’t plant things in our heart or mind that are against God - bad TV show, movies, books and video games.
Now, for the “problem soil.” Sadly, there are three kinds of “heart soil” that don’t bear any kind of spiritual fruit. These people don’t share the truth that is deep down in their hearts. Instead of good fruit, their lives are full of worry, fear, greed, and frustration. They think more about themselves than about the Lord. If this sounds like your life, there is only one way to make a change! Jesus says He is the WAY (John 14:6). Confess: Tell the Lord that your heart has not been good soil. Ask Him to plow up the hard places and replace them with a good, soft heart that will be the perfect place for His truth to take root and grow. Listen to God’s promise:
I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. - Ezekiel 36:26 NLT
http://www.gotquestions.org/parable-sower.html says:
ReplyDeleteThe man represented by the “good ground” is the only one of the four who is truly saved, because salvation’s proof is fruit (Matthew 3:7-8; 7:15-20).
To summarize the point of the Parable of the Sower: “A man’s reception of God’s Word is determined by the condition of his heart.” A secondary lesson would be “Salvation is more than a superficial, albeit joyful, hearing of the gospel. Someone who is truly saved will go on to prove it.” May our faith and our lives exemplify the "good soil" in the Parable of the Sower.
My 2 cents: I was going to question the statement above: “A man’s reception of God’s Word is determined by the condition of his heart.”
DeleteHowever, on further reflection, I actually think this is correct. But to be correct, the idea of "point of time" salvation has to be incorrect. In other words, people don't just get saved all of a sudden (although there is the gift of the Holy Spirit at a point in time).
I think that God must work on a person, preparing their soil for a while. Once the soil is prepared, God's seeds can germinate.
So yes, we cannot say that anyone unsaved can be good on their own (same with the saved), and only when people are good, God enters them. But we can say that God takes time to work on someone's heart, preparing them for His coming. The essential difference is between the action of ourselves (which are always fruitless) and the action of God (who prepares the soil).
I believe that Salvation is more than a point of time event, but it is a life-long process culminating at the final Judgment. (Although, once again, I think the Holy Spirit entering us is a point of time event).
More of my 2 cents: I don't think that the good soil is about someone who is saved, but more about a portion of us that is redeemed.
DeleteI think that our lives is a large garden with soil in various states. I think that we all have all four types of soil in our lives, and that God is always preparing that soil in our lives, turning it into good soil.
I think that we all have areas in which we are hard, shallow, idolatrous, or surrendered to God. It just doesn't make sense that we are either good soil or one of the others. It also doesn't make sense that by saying the prayer of Salvation, we all of a sudden turn to 100% good soil. It also doesn't make sense that we need to be good soil before God enters us.
Just a thought - I've always approached this parable as Jesus was telling me (the hearers) to be good soil. But what if we flipped it? Maybe He is telling this to the disciples not to tell them to be good soil (because, really, what can soil do of itself?) but to tell them as farmers to expect different outcomes when they preach the gospel.
DeleteWhat do you think?
I think that Jesus had multiple points to many of His parables, and I think that this was probably one of them. He probably wanted to tell His future evangelists what kinds of responses to expect from people.
DeleteSo while I still think that Jesus was warning people to not be the other kinds of soil, it also looks like He had a side message for His disciples in explaining the meaning.
This may also solve the mystery of why Jesus explained His parables to the disciples alone (making Him aware of His second point) - giving those who already had even more - the question which has been bothering me.
Sorry: "(making THEM aware of His second point)"
Deletehttps://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_stewart/don_stewart_1345.cfm says concerning why Jesus taught with parables:
ReplyDeleteUnwillingness on the part of the people to receive Jesus' message of the kingdom was the reason that He taught in parables. The truths of the kingdom of God were heard by them but not understood. It was not because God was hiding the truth from them-it was because they did not want to hear.
This points to a great truth. God has given the people every chance to accept the message of Jesus. His ministry was attested by miracles. He offered the proper credentials as the Messiah, yet they did not believe Him. The realities of the kingdom, therefore, were not theirs to know. The people who believed in Jesus as the Messiah would understand the parables. They would comprehend the great truths of the kingdom of God.
Some years later the Apostle Paul would echo the same truth:
But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known they would not have crucified the Lord of glory . . . For what man knows the things of man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God . . . But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:7,8,11,14).
The truth of God is to be understood spiritually. The great majority of the people in Jesus' day were not interested in God's truth.
Jesus spoke in parables - earthly stories with a heavenly meaning. He did so that his disciples would comprehend his teachings and that unbelievers would be without comprehension. Those interested in understanding the truth of his message would understand while those not interested would remain without understanding.
http://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-parables.html says:
ReplyDeleteIt has been said that a parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. The Lord Jesus frequently used parables as a means of illustrating profound, divine truths. Stories such as these are easily remembered, the characters bold, and the symbolism rich in meaning. Parables were a common form of teaching in Judaism. Before a certain point in His ministry, Jesus had employed many graphic analogies using common things that would be familiar to everyone (salt, bread, sheep, etc.) and their meaning was fairly clear in the context of His teaching. Parables required more explanation, and at one point in His ministry, Jesus began to teach using parables exclusively.
From this point on in Jesus’ ministry, when He spoke in parables, He explained them only to His disciples. But those who had continually rejected His message were left in their spiritual blindness to wonder as to His meaning. He made a clear distinction between those who had been given “ears to hear” and those who persisted in unbelief—ever hearing, but never actually perceiving and “always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). The disciples had been given the gift of spiritual discernment by which things of the spirit were made clear to them. Because they accepted truth from Jesus, they were given more and more truth. The same is true today of believers who have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit who guides us into all truth (John 16:13). He has opened our eyes to the light of truth and our ears to the sweet words of eternal life.
Our Lord Jesus understood that truth is not sweet music to all ears. Simply put, there are those who have neither interest nor regard in the deep things of God. So why, then, did He speak in parables? To those with a genuine hunger for God, the parable is both an effective and memorable vehicle for the conveyance of divine truths. Our Lord’s parables contain great volumes of truth in very few words—and His parables, rich in imagery, are not easily forgotten. So, then, the parable is a blessing to those with willing ears. But to those with dull hearts and ears that are slow to hear, the parable is also an instrument of both judgment and mercy.
https://www.raptureready.com/faq/faq248.html says:
ReplyDeleteWhen Jesus had the rapt attention of His audience and the people were humble and anxious to hear, Jesus spoke plainly. But, when His audience contained people who were prideful and resistant to His instruction, He used parables that pierced the hearts of those who were open but were lost on the proud.
Second Peter 3:9 teaches that God does not want anyone to perish but, rather, that all would come to repentance. His desire is that all people would turn to Him and seek understanding of the truths of His Word. He promises that if a person seeks after God, He will reveal himself.
http://www.simplybible.com/f664.htm says:
ReplyDeleteWhy Did Jesus Speak in Parables?
—He had very good reasons
1 To Give His Enemies No Ground
The enemies of Jesus were always waiting for him to say something they could use against him (Luke 11:53-54). By speaking in parables, Jesus was making it very hard for them. He could hardly be arrested for telling homely stories!
2 To Enlighten the True Hearted
The good heart hears God’s word, understands it, and seeks to know more about the kingdom of heaven and God’s will. In the parables people found what they were looking for.
3. To Make People Think
Jesus knew that not everybody would understand or give proper thought to his parables. Some people tune their hearts and ears to God’s word, whilst others deliberately block their ears to God’s voice. Yet others neither tune nor block their ears —Jesus told parables to challenge such folk.
4 To Divide Into Two
In telling the parables, Jesus was bringing pressure to bear upon his listeners, to either open their spiritual eyes and ears and be enlightened, or to shut their eyes and ears tighter and be condemned.
The parables not only make people think, they also make people choose. They bring people out of the grey area into the clearly black or white. The parables were a winnowing fork for Jesus, by which he was able to separate the wheat from the chaff.
5 To Fulfil Prophecy
My 2 cents on why Jesus spoke in parables:
ReplyDeleteI disagree with most of the reasons given so far - especially the oft repeated reason that only good hearted people could understand the parables. The fact that the disciples had no idea what Jesus was talking about flies in the face of that.
I think the reason Jesus spoke in parables is out of mercy for them. The people couldn't handle the truth. They would reject it if they heard it (just like how they all left Him when He told them that they had to eat His body and drink His blood in John 5 or 6). Jesus knew that, so instead of turning them away with the truth, He planted seeds that would plow the soil of their hearts.
When people's soil became plowed enough, they would start questioning the parables and come back for more.
I never thought of it this way before. Given this, I now know why I was/am so bothered by the direct evangelism techniques from the evangelism movement. What I kept seeing is that those who didn't believe would be driven further away, while it seemed to me that the only people who responded were those who already believed.
I am now of the opinion that we should have the same mercy for people that Jesus did. Instead of asking loudly if people are saved and then going into a gospel rant (that will surely turn people off), we need to be used by God to plow people's hearts by getting them to wonder.
"Do you think there is something that started everything or do you think everything appeared spontaneously?" "Hey, what did you think of that lady on the news that said blah blah?" "Do you ever wonder why there are so many churches?" "Hey, I saw this article on comparisons between religions. This guy claimed that Christianity is unique . . ."
I know I opened a can of worms here and welcome thoughts on this.
http://www.studylight.org/language-studies/difficult-sayings/index.cgi?a=430 says about giving to them that already have:
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like late 20th century capitalism with a redistribution of income from the rich to the richer rather than to the poor. Its actually closer to an unattributed 16th century proverb "Money makes money". Our response to the biblical revelation question as it is to the moneyed one is that it simply is not fair "to give to him who has and take from him who has not", Robin Hood redistribution in reverse.
. . . Parable of the Minas where the person with one mina did not invest but hid the mina and had it taken away from him and given to the one who had ten minas. In Matthew's context it has to do with understanding, he who understands some will go on to understand more and receive the fruit of that understanding, eternal life; whilst he who understands nothing will receive nothing and even his life will eventually be taken from him.
The saying is typically Jewish as these Rabbinic citations demonstrate:
"He who does not increase his knowledge decreases it" (Mishnah, Pirqe Abôth 1.13)
"Observe how the character of the Holy One, blessed be He, differs from that of flesh and blood. A mortal can put something into an empty vessel but not into a full one, but the Holy One, blessed be He, is not so, He puts more into a full vessel but not into an empty one." (Babylonian Talmud, Berakôth, 40a; Sukkah 46a)
Perhaps the images here are that God will keep filling a full cup so that it continued to overflow whereas am empty cup cannot be filled at all unless it has its cover or lid taken off to allow filling in the first place.
These serve to illustrate the argument that a disciple's understanding should and does grow but "to those outside" illumination may be just as far away as ever. On a separate basis Jesus did indeed talk about giving to those who cannot return and hence not expecting it back (Luke 6:30; 14:12), and he also praised God that he had revealed wisdom to babes and not to the apparently wise who actually turned out to be fools (Luke 10:21).
http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols25-27/chs1488.pdf says:
ReplyDeleteTWO great general principles are conspicuous in the Gospel. The first is that God gives of His Grace to the empty—“He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty.” The second principle is that where God has given a measure of Grace He is known to give more—“He gives more Grace.” . . . He gives Grace to those who have none and more Grace to those whom He has already favored. These two principles do not contradict each other, but help to make each more complete.
My 2 cents on the question of riches dispersal:
ReplyDeletev. 12: "Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them."
We cannot confuse earthly monetary rules with spiritual laws. We cannot take this verse and apply it to physical things. For one thing, there is an unlimited source of God's abundance. We never need to compete with others for it. In fact, we are commanded to team up to multiply this spiritual abundance. With earthly riches, if I share with others, I get less.
Jesus wants us to give our earthly riches away to gain heavenly riches. Earthly riches are to have no hold over us, but we are to cling to heavenly riches. So, if anything, earthly riches and heavenly riches are opposite to each other. If that is true, opposite laws would apply to them.
Is it fair that some people are more heavenly rich than others? Yes. Because, once again, there is unlimited heavenly riches. The only reason people aren't infinitely heavenly rich is because they don't want to be, aren't ready for them, or are hanging on to earthly things and can't "hold" heavenly riches. Even though there is and will be a difference between how heavenly rich people are, anyone can always gain more heavenly riches. No one is holding them back.