Matthew 13: Parables

Introduction

Matthew’s Gospel now moves into a section on parables. Here Jesus is going to teach the people about the kingdom of heaven, but he’s going to do it in a way that is both relatable and mysterious. Some get it. Some don’t. And that’s the point. The parables will teach us many things about the kingdom, and that’s part of the intrigue. The kingdom of heaven can’t simply be understood in just one way.

Today’s lesson won’t be totally chronological with the text. Instead I want to start with a discussion parables, their purpose, and why Jesus uses them.

From there the parables will be broken up this way:

The first two parables deal with the members of the kingdom.

The next two parables deal with the size and growth of the kingdom.

The next two parables deal with the value of the kingdom.

The final parable, for a total of seven, will once again illustrate how the kingdom works.

What is a parable?

Defining what a parable is isn’t that easy. The word itself is a transliteration of the Greek word παραβολή (parabole), which means we aren’t translating it into an already existing word - we’re simply spelling out the original word with English letters!

One good definition says that a parable is something “that serves as a model or example pointing beyond itself for later realization”. It could also be “a narrative or saying of varying length, designed to illustrate a truth especially through comparison or simile”.

Mark Scott describes parables as relatable stories that contain truth, and serve like a pebble inside of a shoe.

The pebble in the shoe is just annoying enough to always be thinking about it. Such a small thing pulls your focus to it.

Parables are meant to stick in the back of your mind and force you to meditate on them until - maybe days, weeks, months, or maybe eve years later! - it suddenly clicks and you say, “Aha! I understand what Jesus was saying!”

For Jesus, it seems that his goal was to reveal the truths of the kingdom through these very relatable and every day stories. Some are long, some are short, but they are all remarkable simple and carry very well across almost every culture.

So then why did Jesus speak in parables and stories rather than just come right out and tell the people what he wanted them to know? Well, the disciples had that very question in vs 10!

The Lord’s response is essentially, “To those who want to know, they’ll find out. And to those who don’t care, they won’t find out.”

This is a practical application of his previous “ask, seek, knock” teaching. Anyone who wants to know about the kingdom, the secrets are freely revealed “and he will have an abundance”. But if someone doesn’t want to learn about the kingdom, well then “even what he has will be taken away”.

We still do this in our own lives. If we are trying to tell someone something really important, but it’s clear that they aren’t listening or do not care, what do we do? We usually don’t waste our energy.

We see this especially with alcoholics and addicts, and other vices. We can beg them all day to stop and get help, but if they don’t want help, they won’t listen. And so it’s hard to continue to try and tell someone who doesn’t want to change.

The Lord does this with His parables. Some people have faith and want to learn about His kingdom, and so they’ll listen and understand the parables. But some, like the Pharisees, have too hard of hearts. They don’t want to listen. They don’t want to know. And so the parables are merely harmless stories.

Jesus tells us that a person’s inability to understand is a fulfilment of Isaiah 6:9–10 “And he said, “Go, and say to this people: “ ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.””

On the flip side, Jesus calls the disciples (and I’d say all believers) blessed because they/we do seek to understand. In fact, we are more blessed than even the prophets and people of old who longed to see Jesus and the kingdom revealed.

Hebrews 11:13 “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.”

1 Peter 1:10–12 “Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.”

Scripture makes clear that as Christians, as seekers of God and the Truth, the Truth has been revealed to us, while the minds of others are clouded and darkened and they cannot understand.

Colossians 1:27 “To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

1 Corinthians 2:6–10 “Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.”

Romans 11:8 “as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.””

2 Corinthians 3:14 “But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.”

2 Corinthians 4:4 “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

Matthew tells us in verse 35 that Jesus teaching in parables is also a fulfilment of prophecy, specifically Psalm 78:2 “I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old,”

The biggest takeaway from this: keep searching, keep asking, keep listening, keep knocking. Never stop pursuing the Lord Jesus and doing good. The more you seek, the more you will find. And that’s ultimately what I think we’ll see as a recurring theme in these parables.

Parable of the Sower

The first parable is perhaps the most well known. The parable of the sower uses a common story familiar to every society that uses some kind of agriculture. When you plant seeds, they will always land somewhere.

This is one of the two parables that Jesus actually interprets for us. The “seed” is the word of the kingdom.

The Lord reveals to us four usual outcomes when people hear the word. But breaking it down even further, the first three are the outcomes that happen when the seed lands on “bad soil”. The fourth, when the seed lands on “good soil” also has 3 outcomes.

The first outcome is those who hear, but don’t understand. The evil one prevents the “seed” from even taking root.

The second outcome is the “rocky ground” seed. This is the kind of person who hears the word, gets super excited, but then flames out quickly - especially when hard, or rocky, times come.

These people may like the idea of Jesus, love it even, and get excited. But they don’t pursue him deeply. They don’t grow roots. When the first sign of trouble comes, they are the first to walk away.

I think this happens to many youth who grow up in the church. They are made to go to church every Sunday (and Wednesday), but they don’t develop roots. Maybe they have a great week of camp where they are on fire for God…but then they come off the ‘mountain high’ and reality kicks in. In both cases, I think this is why so many young people walk away from the faith in college.

The third outcome is seed sown among thorns. The ‘thorns’ are the “cares of the world” and the “deceitful of riches”.

Notice the Lord says that these things make the seed unfruitful. I think these are people who do accept the word…but they don’t live it out. They don’t produce fruit.

Wealth certainly still leads many Christians astray, but I think in our day and age politics are the major thorns that crush the faith of many. Or at the very least make them unfruitful. Many Christians care more about the state of the country and who’s running it than the Kingdom and Christ.

At any rate, there are many things in this world that can easily choke out our faith if we aren’t careful.

The fourth outcome is the one that lands on good soil. This itself has three outcomes. This is someone who hears the word, understands it, and let’s it start transforming their lives.

Jesus says that sometimes the fruit they’ll bear is hundredfold, another sixty, and another thirty. I’m not a farmer, but that seems like a pretty good yield!

And so we see that there are different types of unbelief, and different kinds of belief. One produces fruit, and the other doesn’t. The one’s that do produce more than the others.

So what exactly is the “fruit” that we are expected to produce? I’d say any kind of good works, but Scripture does give us some specifics....

Galatians 5:22–23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

Paul encourages us all to continue to produce fruit that includes love and righteousness in Philippians 1:9–11 “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

Jesus tells us that for us to bear the fruit of the Spirit, we must be connected to Him in John 15:5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

Parable of the Weeds

The next parable Jesus tells is that of the weeds. One against, the Lord is using an every day example from agriculture. Just like the previous parable, it’s based around the idea of sowing seeds. The Lord also interprets this one for us.

Instead of looking at individual outcomes like in the previous parable, this parable takes a bigger picture view of the Kingdom.

In the previous parable, the sower was not identified. But this time he is identified, because as it turns out there’s two different sowers and two different kinds of seeds.

The first sower is Jesus himself. Whatever role we play in spreading the Gospel, Jesus is ultimately the one planting the good seeds.

The second is the devil. His “bad seeds” also take root.

The two seeds grow up together, but the twist is that God actually allows this to happen. The church unfortunately sees ‘bad seeds’ sprout up all the time. These are people who do not produce the fruit of the Spirit, but rather the fruit of the flesh. They do evil and not good.

Now we might ask, “God do you want us to kick those weeds out?” But the Lord leaves room for repentance. Maybe the weeds can yet become wheat. But on the other hand, the the wheat might become weeds.

And so the Lord is patient and merciful, allowing each person in the Church to grow into what they want to be. In the end he will separate us. Justice will poured out. The good will stay and be welcomes into the kingdom, but the wicked will be cast out.

Notice the last thing Jesus says about this: the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. This is an allusion to Daniel 12:3 “And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.”

This is in reference to the resurrection. All the dead will be raised and given new bodies, and those who are alive will be transformed. Our resurrected bodies will shine like the stars.

This is a popular belief that Christians will be taken away from here when Jesus returns. But that’s not true. The righteous will stay, and the kingdom will be here on Earth. It’s the wicked who will be taken away and “gathered out of the kingdom” as it was “in the day of Noah”.

Mustard Seed and Leaven

Sandwiched between these two parables are two more much smaller parables.

These two parables focus on the spread and size of the kingdom rather than it’s inhabitants.

In one way, the kingdom is like a mustard seed. It starts small. But grows big. This is how the Church has always been.

The Church started in the backwoods of the Roman Empire with a small group of nobodies. But it quickly grew and eventually overtook the Empire in less than 300 years.

Everywhere the Kingdom goes, the Holy Spirit grows it rapidly.

Today, the Church is in every part of the world, some places its branches are bigger than others, but nonetheless it attracts everyone to come and “build a nest”.

Similarly, the kingdom is like leaven that is spread throughout dough. I’m not a baker, but it apparently doesn’t take much leaven to spread through the entire flour.

All it takes is one spark of the Gospel, and eventually the kingdom permeates everything it touches. Again, the whole world has been permeated by Christians and the Church.

Three Final Kingdom Parables

The last three parables Jesus gives on the kingdom are much shorter. The first two focus on the value of the kingdom. The last revisits the theme from the first two parables.

In one sense the kingdom is like a valuable treasure that a man sold everything to obtain.

Notice that he found it in a field that wasn’t his. Sometimes the Gospel is right under our noses and the world doesn’t even know it. But to those who go looking and find it, it is worth everything.

Similarly, it’s like a pearl of great value that a merchant found. He too sold everything to obtain it.

Notice that this is a merchant in search of fine pearls. “Seekers” will usually search every religion for the truth and eventually will come upon the Gospel.

In both cases, they sold all they had to obtain the kingdom. Would we give up everything for the kingdom? Would we give up everything for Jesus?

5. The final parable revisits the working of the kingdom. This time Jesus compares it to fishermen and a net.

a. The sea represents the world (this is common in Scripture). The fish of every kind represents the all the different peoples of the world.

b. The Gospel will bring in everybody to the Church, both good and bad. But in the end, God will have his angels separate the two.

Conclusion

The Lord ends this section by asking the disciples (and us) a question: do you understand all of these things? When they say yes, he makes a strange comment. He says that “every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

This is yet another parable that may be confusing to some, but it actually bookmarks the section well. A scribe was also a “teacher of the law” (NIV translation). They knew the Old Testament (Law) like the back of their hands. Now Jesus says that those scribes who have gone even further in being “trained for the kingdom of heaven” - that is, those who have learned from Jesus, followed Jesus, listened to Jesus - they are the ones who can bring out “treasure from what is new and what is old.”

So study your Bibles! All of it, Old and New Testament. Follow Jesus, seek after the kingdom and learn how the Old Covenant pointed towards the New.

I think Jesus challenging us to become experts in the Kingdom so that we can become experts in the entire Scriptures. When we can do that, we can produce the treasures that not only nourish us spiritually, but also draw people in to wanting to have themselves.

This is the kingdom of heaven: we seek Jesus, we are transformed by Jesus and produce the fruit of His Spirit, and we lead others into His Church that they may experience the same life and treasure that we have.