Matthew 13:36-43 – Be careful what we sow

Like in the case of the parable of the sower, the disciples came to Jesus again and asked for the explanation on the parable of the weeds of the field.  The message of this parable complement that of the parable of the sower. It tells us that along the sowing of the message of the Kingdom, there would be false sowing of another kind of seeds. After sowing the good seed, the farmer rightly would anticipate a good harvest for his labor. However, in this parable we are told that the enemy came and sow in the same field, the seed of weeds. The sower of wheat we know is Christ, the Son of God, and the sower of the weeds is none other than the devil. The wheats refer to the children of the Kingdom. They are the children of God. The tares are clearly a reference to the children of the evil one.

Evidently, the false sowing took place after the sowing of the good seed. While waiting for the harvest, both the good and bad seed germinated and sprouted. It became clearly evident that weeds were present among the fruit of the good seed. Isn’t this true of the scenario in the church? Among the genuine children of God, we find pseudo believers, the children of the evil one. It would be impossible to root them out without affecting the genuine believers. The owner of the field knew this so well. So he advised his concerned workers to wait till the harvest. This of course anticipates a coming judgement. It would be when the fruit of both the wheat and weed would be separated. The wheats will be gathered into God’s eternal presence, while the weeds will be gathered into eternal damnation.
 

Here is a call to be careful what we hear and what we share. We need to reflect on what we have heard before we share them. Let’s be careful about whose seed we are sowing. There are undiscerning believers who unwittingly are sowing bad seeds and propagating false doctrines and bringing confusion to the church. It behooves us both as workers and children of God, to be discerning over what we have heard, for it will affect what we are sowing. We must not take in any teaching, hook, line and sinker, without careful reflection over it. In so doing, we will not be found spreading something detrimental and even disastrous. We want to be sure that whatever we share will bring forth fruits of righteousness.

Matthew 13:24-35 – Be patient and wait for God’s timing

In these verses Jesus told three parables. First parable is about wheats and weeds, second one is a parable on mustard seed and the third is on leaven.  All three parables center on the theme of waiting. The farmer had to wait until harvest time and probably felt impatient as he saw the tares growing along the wheats. The birds in the second parable had to wait for the tiny mustard seed to grow into a shrub. And the woman baking bread had to wait for the leaven to take effect in the whole dough.

Calamities around the world are on the increase. On a daily basis we learn of tragedies, earthquakes, typhoons, volcano eruptions, impending wars, and the list can go on and on. In the light of all these calamities, waiting is the last thing people want. If it is true that in Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God is loosening and gaining ground, then most people would rather have it all right now. Who would want to wait for the culmination of it? 

The servants of the first parable want to go out and pull out the weeds. Why wait till the harvest time? So they thought! However, they failed to realize that things are not so simple and straight forward. In uprooting the weeds there’s a possibility that the wheats would be uprooted as well. At the heart of the parable about wheats and weeds, is the theme of patience. God certainly would not enjoy watching His kingdom full of weeds alongside the wheats. But He certainly wouldn’t want to declare the harvest too early and thus destroy the wheat together with the weeds. His desire is for everyone who is His, to be saved. That’s why Peter in his letters tells us why Christ delays in His Coming, is because of God’s patience. He does not want anyone to perish but all to come to repentance.

Like the growth of a plant and the leavening of the dough, Jesus assures us that the Kingdom will surely come. The period of waiting for it to come is not an indication of God’s passivity. Or that He does not care. While evil and the work of darkness may be active, God is also mysteriously working behind the scene. He still warns of the final overthrowing of evil. And it will be on schedule. Meanwhile He is refining us, and with the help of what’s happening, shapes our patience and brings out our best potential through our tough times.  

Matthew 13:18-23 – How are we impacted by the message of the Kingdom?

Jesus had seen the varying responses to His message and the work of the Kingdom in His ministry. There were some responses that led to the dead end. Many had chosen those routes. He knew, however, that there would be one way that would usher a person into true growth in the experience of the Kingdom.

So He pointed to the different reactions people have to the message of the Kingdom. As it was in Jesus day so it is today. Some after hearing the message have absolutely no response. Their hearts are like pavements, grounds that are untilled. Then there are those who would show some initial signs of life on hearing the message. They responded with joy but because they are like rocky ground, the message could not penetrate deeper. So they have no deep roots to sustain the initial experience of joy and excitement. When such people are confronted by the adversities of life, they immediately give up their faith. The third kind of people refers to those that promised to bear fruit on hearing the message, but these ultimately remained fruitless. Their hearts are like thorny grounds. They are overtaken by he cares of this world and the deceitfulness of materialism, and got suffocated by their worldly concerns. They soon fall away from the faith. The last kind is the type of people that responded to the message with the right attitude of heart. They assimilate what they have heard, and the message takes root and brings about harvest of varying degrees – a 100, 60 and 30 folds.

It is quite evident from this parable that the condition of one’s heart determines the ability to respond to the message of the Kingdom. There are three different states of the heart that would prevent the message of the Kingdom from taking effect. The superficial heart, the unstable wishy-washy heart, and the worldly heart. They repel the Word. There is one state of heart that would ensure growth of the message. It is the yielded heart that would be ready to take in the word, assimilate it so that transformation could be experienced.  

Where are we today? What is the state of our hearts? We know what we really must be if we are to be impacted by His Word. Let’s exercise care to prepare our hearts to receive the Word. Till it if we need to. By all means remove the rock and uproot the thorns. But yield to God we must. It’s only when we have a prepared and yielded heart, then can we have a life ready to be impacted by the message. Then and only then will we be truly fruit bearing people of the Kingdom. 

 

 

Matthew 13:10-17 – Why parables?

Although Jesus had only told the parable of the sower, the disciples’ question was, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” Notice that the word ‘parables’ is in the pleural. Obviously, Jesus must have told them more than one parable. And from His answer to the disciples’ question, we can surmise the reasons why Jesus spoke in parables. 

He said that parables reveal mysteries of the Kingdom. The mysteries Jesus referred to are divinely encrypted messages concerning the Kingdom of Heaven. Specifically, the mysteries concern the realities of the rule of grace and glory of God. They are mysteries because they cannot be known through human abilities or ingenuities. They can only be known and understood as God reveals them. Furthermore, the Lord tells us that only people to whom God has granted the privilege would understand the message. Here Jesus is making a differentiation between His disciples and those Pharisees and people outside the Kingdom. Inability to accept divine revelation has something to do with how one responds to the past dealings of God. Persistent resistance and refusal to accept the things that God is doing would cause one to explain everything away. With enough regularity, one’s spiritual senses would become dull. And overtime the heart would be hardened, and resisting God’s dealings becomes a common response. By what they do, they keep nullifying the grace and gift of God.

 

Christ’s disciples who acknowledge the divine program in history and choose to believe in God, would be given the privilege to know. Not only that, they will be more open to more of God’s revelation. To those who did not seize the opportunity to respond to God, and accept what He had been revealing, even whatever privilege they have had would be taken away. They would lose the ability to see truth.

Referring to the Pharisees, who resolutely resisted and refused to acknowledge His message and the Kingdom movement, Jesus said that they were experiencing the prophecy of Isaiah in reality. They were seeing and hearing yet they could not understand nor fathom the truth. And the truth remained oblivious to them. Then the Lord quoted the words of Isaiah 6:9-10. It never was God’s desire to conceal the truth from His people and to prevent them from being healed. Speaking in parables is God’s grace. Parables challenge people to think and ponder deeper. With people who take things for granted, a truth explicitly spoken can quite easily sail over their heads. So speaking in parables will require listeners to engage their mind to think and deliberate. Truth be told, through parables, no one can say that the truth is forced upon them. Neither can anyone says that they are not given any opportunity, for in the parables there are adequate light to convince them of the truth.
 

Jesus commended His disciples for they saw the Kingdom program at work and chose to believe Christ and to flow with Him. They were more privileged than many in the past.  For they had desired to see and experience the Kingdom the way the disciples did, but were not given the opportunity. What do we make out of what the Lord is saying to us in this passage? Are we sensitive to the program of God? We must remain open to God’s timetable. We must pray and seek to know and recognize His moment. Don’t be so insistent that God must do it the way we think He should. Be careful, lest we fail to hoist our sail to catch the wind of God’s moment for now!  

Matthew 13: 1-9 – Parables and the Kingdom of Heaven

Jesus was now sitting by the sea. This of course is the Sea of Galilee. Although it is called a sea, it essentially is a lake. The geography of this lake tells us that the ground slopes upward from the shore and curved sharply over several inlets around the lake. The natural structure of this lake makes it almost like an amphitheater. The stage would be formed by a boat berthed at a distance from the shoreline. Audience standing at the shore can hear a message clearly and distinctly when it is spoken from that boat, even when it is without a modern sound system.   

In verse 1, we are told that a great crowd gathered to Jesus, who was sitting by the sea. We are not told precisely the number there, but we surmise that it was a huge gathering of people. So the Lord Jesus did the most natural thing, He got into a boat and pulled a little distance from the shore, and from there He taught the people standing by the beach. Here, Matthew tells us that Jesus taught them using parables.  

The parables of Jesus are essentially stories with Kingdom themes. They contained things and events pertaining to the Gospel. Some of the parables are narrated to reveal the final outcome of the Kingdom. They tell us that there will come a time when the Kingdom will be established once and for all and wickedness will forever be removed. Jesus’ audience probably came to hear Him with expected hope and many could have suspected that with Jesus, the judgement of God had begun. They came to hear what He would do to establish that ultimate Kingdom. Of course they came to hear how the prophecies of the Old Testament would be fulfilled. In Jesus they saw the wonderful works and miracles that authenticated Him as the Messiah. So they followed Him with anticipation. But the stories they hear from Him was not what they quite expected. 

When they heard the parable of the sower it must have occurred to them that it’s not a straight forward message. It seems to be a cryptic story of both failure and success of the Kingdom. The Lord precisely said, “He who has ears, let him hear.” It simply means that the story requires a fair bit of analysis. The gem can’t be seen on the surface. To mine it one needs to think through and then decipher the key message.  

The parable of the sower is actually about the Kingdom movement. The three negative soils meant the difficulties it will encounter. However, ultimately the Kingdom will flourish. Like seeds on positive and fruitful ground, it will yield 100, 60 and 30 folds. The Kingdom movement will have different degree of impact but it will gather momentum. Here Jesus, the sower, had introduced it. There will come the moment, when the Kingdom will make substantiate impact. This parable tells us that what the Kingdom believers long for, is loosening and gaining ground. It’s working through the words and work of Jesus. We are invited to stay with Him. Be patient. Don’t give up but stay at it! Listen to the message then go back and analyze. And then return for more.  

Individually what’s in this passage for us? We must come to the Word of God, read, study, think through and apply. As we watch the transformation taking effect in our lives, we come back for more. We will see the amazing transformation taking place like a tree blossoming for His glory!  

Matthew 12:46-50 – Doing the Father’s will

At first glance, these verses give us the chilling idea that Jesus was irritated with His earthly family. His mother and earthly brothers came to where He was, seeking to speak to Him. Describing the similar account, Mark 3:21 suggests that these members of His family thought Jesus had gone mad. Concerned, they were probably hoping to speak to Him. It appears that not only was He grossly misunderstood by the scribes and Pharisees, now even His own kinfolks were disillusioned concerning Him. From the way the Lord Jesus answered when His family members were waiting to speak to Him, suggests that He regarded them as distraction.

However, the force of the passage is not on the negative response that He had shown toward His family. It is pointing positively to the response He was receiving from His followers. Throughout the chapter we saw how the Lord was maligned, accused and had to deal with the schemes thought out by His opponents to undermine His authority and program. His opponents regarded His work as disruptive to their subversive program, and even demonic in nature. Despite all that, His disciples were undeterred. They followed and stayed with Him. They sat listening and absorbing all that He was pouring out. So pointing to them, Jesus said these disciples of His, who were doing the will of God, were His mothers and brothers. When we choose to follow Jesus, we are brought into alignment with God, whom He Himself addressed as Father. Like Him, we now become the beloved children of God, our Father.  

We now have free excess to the Father, and can freely come into His presence and commune with Him. And now in this relationship, we are invited to do the His will, and in a brand new way, find meaning and fulfilment as we journey with Him.

Matthew 12:43-45 – Seek lasting transformation

In life, we all probably would have met someone who seems to have experienced a great transformation in the Lord. Then the next thing we hear about is, that same person had backslidden. And his/her condition had become worse off than before his/her transformation. It would have left us bewildered and wondering why. However, for every case like this, we also know there are scores of people who have had a genuine transformation that had impacted them for a long time. What Jesus meant to tell us here is this: a genuine transformation is lasting. It should get progressively better and not the other way around.

In this account, Jesus was referring to the nation of Israel and not to any person in particular. Hence He used the two words “evil generation.” History tells us that within the nation of Israel herself, there were several attempts by different groups to bring about reformation to Judaism. Some two centuries before Jesus came, the temple in Jerusalem was cleansed by some devout Jews after it was desecrated by a mad Syrian king by the name of Antiochus Epiphanes. Though the reformation happened, it lasted only less than a century. Then the age-old problem returned. Israel remained as sinful and compromising as ever. Then came the Pharisees with their attempt to get at the root of the problem. They attempted to pressurize the people into law keeping attempt. They thought it would free Israel from practices influenced by the pagans through rigorously adhering to the Torah. Then, there was also the group known as the Essenes that came with their strict ascetic lifestyles. It also happened that before Christ arrived and in His growing years, King Herod and his family built the temple in Jerusalem. It was one of the most beautiful building of her time. Many were hopeful that Yahweh, Israel’s God, whom they thought had abandoned them, would return and dwell in that monumental temple.         

All their attempts were futile, so said Jesus. For all that had gone before, the revolt against Antiochus’ desecrated act; the attempt of the Pharisees; the Essenes with their disciplined life; and Herold’s temple building program, the Jews were still as empty as ever. Jesus likened them to a demon-possessed man that had been delivered. But because they remained just as empty, soon that same demon would return and this time he would come with several others. Jesus wanted them to know that they were in danger of being “re-possessed.” All the activities suggesting reformation would amount to nothing, if like a cleansed house, they won’t invite a new occupant to come and stay in it. The result could be worst because the exorcised demon would return with several others and reoccupy the house. If they would not accept Jesus’ Kingdom and His way and acknowledge His rule, they were, in fact, opened to a greater disaster. Jesus was suggesting that their activities of violence, aggression and hatred, disguising as obedience to God, could destroy everything for them. The only impactful and lasting way would be to repent and acknowledge the King and the way of His Kingdom. If not, a greater disaster is looming.

What do we take away from this passage? We need to take a deep look at ourselves to see if our transformation is genuine. Are we getting progressively and incrementally more stable and mature in Christ? Let's us seek to see our Lord more clearly, follow Him more nearly and love Him more dearly!