Sermons

Matthew 13 Jesus Taught with Parables

Intro: Two questions come to mind when I think of Jesus teaching with parables.

• “Why did Jesus teach this way?”
• “What do they mean?”

What Jesus answers throughout Matthew 13.

• Questions Jesus’ intimate followers were asking.
• Most important questions to ask in our day and age.
  • End of all things is at hand.
  • Perverted and predatory culture reminds the end is near.
  • Nearer today than yesterday and closer and closer.

 

• As mortality fails and as God’s patience is tried.
• Guaranteed not to last.

 

1. Why did Jesus teach this way?

[TRANS] Matthew 12 builds ethos that Jesus’ direct preaching was time fused.

• Pivot point from Christ preaching straightforward.
• Parables say, this is over.

[KEY] Crowds rejecting truth ultimately causing more harm to themselves, than good.

• Hearing truth builds a soul to the degree received, while rejecting truth destroys the soul to the degree rejected.

[Illus] Word compared to a power tool. A craftsman builds, creates, completes intricate projects by blueprint. A novice with same power tool deconstructs, destroys projects, and possibly maims, bloodies, and kills himself in the process.

[Point] When the Word is rejected, God is mocked.

Opposite of honoring the Lord, dishonors and blasphemes God.

• Odd to find out that the Lord received glory from both receptivity to the Word and rejecting the Word and this because He is honored by his grace and by his justice.
  • By His Love and by His wrath.
  • By His rescues and by His punishments.
  • By His heaven and by His hell.

 

• Jesus teaching in parables reveals full scope of attributes because they are all present.
  • First, his grace and then his judgment.
  • Everything that describes God is found in between.

[KEY] Introduction to the parable of the soils can serve to answer both, “what and why.”

• “What do these parables mean and Why did Jesus teach this way?
  • Parables tell us the way things truly are.
  • State of things in most raw form and reality.

 

• Parables cast as, “An earthly story with heavenly meaning.”
  • Parable means to “throw alongside.”
    • Casting meaning alongside what Jesus said.
    • Jesus had taught in graphic analogies before parables for clarity.

.

• Parables likewise using common language, things familiar (people, scenarios).
  • Not meant for endless mystical allegorizing.
  • A parable designed to make one immediate point, usually with a “twist.”

 

• Temptation to see parables being made for a simpleton.
  • Couldn’t grasp straightforward teaching.
  • You need nursery rhymes to put the cookies down low.

[KEY] Need to see that parables open the depth and implications of what Jesus is teaching.

• Answering, why here and what we are supposed to be doing with our lives.
  • Parables are priority makers.
  • They temper our expectations for possible outcomes.
  • What we would not otherwise wish for.

 

• Jesus, not chiefly teach parables to make things simpler but instead to both widen and narrow our focus.
  • Like a wide-angle lens that pans out for a panoramic shot or tightens lens to narrow focus.
    • Parables act in both ways.
    • At same time for different people.

 

• Give big picture of what is happening in our world while identifying true saving faith in true believers, living in a world like this one.

 

[Appl] When respectable people ask: “What’s gone wrong with our country” I question whether they are tuned into Christ’s teaching at all.

[KEY] Just look at what Jesus promised to his true believers down in verse 11.

^ESV  Matthew 13:11 And he answered them, ^a“To you it has been given to know ^bthe secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. (Mat 13:11 ESV)

[Note] The word, “secrets” is [mustrpia] where we get our word, “mystery.”

• Usually, mystery means, confusing or unclear where Jesus and all the NT apply “mystery” as what’s revelatory to a believer.

 

• Lights have come on! No longer unclear, but clear.

[Illus] I’m typing this while sitting on the beach front down at Seward, a campsite called Miller’s Landing. When the cloud cover lifts off the mountains, this is unparalleled in beauty. Beauty comes with you can really see what is there. When you can really understand what someone means by what they say. Jesus by parables, establishes the grid through which we filter every event and every foreseeable trajectory we try to follow.

[TRANS] Now, verses 1 and 2 offer a context to take us toward his first parable.  

[Note] Jesus’ third discourse, operating on the same day, now with a decided shift in focus.

• All within a day, things are changing within the ministry of Christ.
  • Remember, “Today is the day of salvation.”
    • Jesus on same day:
      • Healed diseases.
      • Delivered demoniac.
      • Answered Accusations.
        • “Blasphemy of HS”
        • “Personal Family”

 

• Jesus’ locus is Capernaum the town due west of the Sea of Galilee, somewhat of a basecamp for the fishing community.

 

• Leaving “the house” likely Peter’s family home, Jesus returns to the seashore to take up teaching again, to set a new tone.

 

• He was carrying forward his message of being a true family member with Christ (cff. Matt. 12:46-50).
  • Seated in the boat in a serene environment.
    • Sitting normal for Rabbi.
    • He sat, Crowd stood (less sleeping!).

 

• Unafraid of being seized by his family.
  • Outside the pressures of the synagogue or temple (leaders!).
  • Freeing X’s imagination as nature becomes his cathedral.
  • Preaching to mixed crowd of disciples and multitudes.

 

• Jesus goes to sit by the sea, and the crowds follow and begin to mount.
  • How big? Not sure, but populous.
  • Larger crowd meant diversity of spiritual conditions.

 

• Jesus getting “into a boat” was more than being a strategic platform.
  • Jesus wants his teaching to be heard, so the waters create a wise way to amplify to hundreds pressing on Christ, maybe thousands.
  • Jesus needed, “breathing space?”

 

• Still, do not miss symbol: “the whole crowd stood on the beach” creating natural buffer between himself and the people.
  • Teaching Kingdom Parables.
    • Parables, both make distance and draw at the same time.

[KEY] Jesus on the water buffers Jesus from unbelief while drawing people as his voice effectively traveled across water currents flowing inside of receptive hearts and lives. Drawing hearts heavenward.

 

2. What do parables mean?

[TRANS] Verse 3 launches Jesus’ first parable, the foundation for interpreting what parables mean.

• “And he told them many things in parables” (v. 3).

 

• First of seven parables in Matt. 13.
  • Out of the “many things” Jesus would say, first parable (soils) stands out as foundational to the rest.

 

• Judgment apologetic!
  • To split crowd.
  • Disciples and multitudes.

 

• Spurgeon: Parable of sower.
  • Mining the Kingdom.
  • “A world of meaning!”

 

• He begins, “A sower went out to sow” (v. 3).
  • Agricultural, a picture of someone simply dropping seed into the dirt of his field.

 

• Farmer picturing, giving out what has, while leaving the results completely to the Lord.

 

 

• Jesus probably directs the crowd to look behind them at an actual farmer sowing seed in the field.

 

• Seed is the Word:

 

• What God is sowing into this world’s soil!
  • Word cast through believers!
  • What believers are called to give it out.

 

• Freeing reality is knowing what responsible for!
  • One task and not another.
  • As a believer feel the Lord’s push to give out truth.
    • Teach a study.
    • Offer counsel based on the Bible.
    • Explain a life principle to believers and unbelievers alike.

 

• Your primary task by God’s perfect design.
  • Once the Bible leaves your lips, like the seed falling from your hand you have absolutely nothing to do with what happens next.
  • At that point, the Word must do the work, under the sovereign will of God.

 

• All you must do, is do it, “A sower went out to sow” (v. 3).
  • Nothing more than this is required of you.
  • But this is required of you.

^ESV  1 Corinthians 3:6 ^aI planted, ^bApollos watered, ^cbut God gave the growth. (1Co 3:6 ESV)

“Some sow, some water, some harvest”

 

[TRANS] The next verses represent outcomes of what happens while the Word goes out.

[Prop] There are four possible outcomes.

• Four reactions to the Word.

 

• Simply: What the Lord teaches.
  • Four and no more but always the four.
    • The Word of God does not return void.
    • Something always happens when Word goes out.

 

• Never fails and never rendered a loss as it simply goes forth.
  • We support a church, for these four outcomes to take place.
  • We may only wish for the fourth, but I think we must accept them all!
  • All fulfilling God’s Will.

[KEY] Ministry built solely around the fourth outcome will compromise to Pragmatism! Consumerism! Gearing around fourth, ignores the sovereign hand of God.

• Ministries become ruled by pragmatic results.
• God is in control of all outcomes.

[Illus] I heard a talk given on the resurgence of Calvinism that has come on over the last several years. Though the doctrine remains, where the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement fell with its leaders was the focus on pragmatism. Program hype to attract followers built fleshly expectations that became the catalyst for compromise.

[KEY] Focusing on all four outcomes represented in the four soils is the submission to the sovereign will of the Lord.

 

[Point] First principle Jesus teaches from the parables is that God is sovereign over how people respond to the Word.

• People are both accepting and rejecting the Truth all the time, and in one of four ways all the time.
  • It is always this way.
    • You may designate people in different ways, by title or personality but you need to see that everyone, all the time finds themselves in one of these four categories.
    • All are equally reacting to the Word of God.

 

• To the Lordship of Christ.
  • All four outcomes fall under the Lordship of Christ.

[Appl] You may believe that some are better off because they have been soft or casual believers but be not deceived, people who have either never heard or allowed the Word to penetrate their heart at all are often better off than someone who knows the truth and has the appearance of a slim faith but with no real saving fruit or root in their life.

• Three of the four soils are on equal footing in terms of being equally dead, spiritually.
  • One is not better off than the other.
    • The prayer of salvation is always for the fourth soil.
    • The only saved soil.

 

• Must, likewise yield to God’s will.

[TRANS] Unpack these outcomes in their generic way leaving the details in anticipation of next time.

1. Hard soil

[Note] First outcome (reaction), “…as he sowed” is that “…some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them” (v. 4).

• Nothing criticized by the act of the “sower” (v. 4).
  • Seed falling along the path is a natural consequence to seed being hurled out or cast.
    • There is an indiscriminate nature to casting seed or giving the Word out.
    • You just speak it and say it to whomever.
    • Whenever!

 

• Two ways to cast seed.
  • Ancient Palestinian method was to cast first, plow it in second.
  • Modern method is to plow first, cast second.
    • The advantage of indiscriminate casting is freedom to freestyle.
    • Less precise, more liberty.

[Appl] I have said numerous times it is the person you do not even expect who listens in who is being converted who believe, while all the while you’re thinking this person is prime real estate to believe.

[Question] To receive it. But you get no traction. But why? The seed falls where birds come and devour it.

[App] I’m sitting at Miller’s Landing where I dropped several bad peanuts under my table. Judy feeling compassion on a passing Raven decided to feed one of them and then suddenly several gathered, squawking all around my table.

Birds live in the moment and seize what is in front of them and so it is when you give out the Word. When someone is unfeeling to the Word, an enemy of God will swoop in and immediately redirect someone’s attention.

“Is this outcome one God intends?” Yes and no. No in the sense that God is not willing for any to perish and yes in the sense that he allows for enemy interference. I am not going too deep here until we come to Christ’s explanation but to say, we must yield to God’s secret will when enemies redirect someone away from the Word.      

[Note] Birds represent “the evil one” (v. 19) and will be specific, but for now, “the evil one” works through many “birds” snatching.

[Illus] Birds that “devour!” (v. 4). Being on the beach at Kasilof to dip net last week showed me the massive devouring fetish, birds have for fish guts. Likewise, the seals in the water, waiting for a passing fish.

I pulled in my first fish (after waiting, watching everyone else hit) dragging it up on the beach and found it devoured, only bones left and soon was the laughingstock, left only with a fish skeleton.

To devour is thrashing language, where swarms of seagulls picture their relentless nature. To devour is pictured in several NT verses.

^ESV  2 Corinthians 11:20 For you bear it if someone ^amakes slaves of you, or ^bdevours you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or ^cstrikes you in the face. (2Co 11:20 ESV)

^ESV  Galatians 5:15 But if you ^abite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. (Gal 5:15 ESV)

 

^ESV  Revelation 12:4 His tail swept down ^aa third of the stars of heaven and ^bcast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child ^che might devour it. (Rev 12:4 ESV)

[KEY] Jesus always predicts enemies.

• No matter culture or century you live in, expect enemies.
  • Satan’s domain and this first outcome, expected.
    • Expect most Gospel seed will be snatched up.
      • Most seed falls on infertile ground, infertile hearts.
      • When the Gospel goes out, reception is rare, and most people are distracted.

 

• Most will be the hard path with immediate rejection.
  • Tell me this isn’t your experience.
  • People hear something about truth and say, “No way that’s real or true.”
    • Next three soils, to include soft soil, are rarer, but while being rare, only one of the three is saved.
    • Most reject the truth outright.
      • Clear and done while some consider the truth, try it out and test it.

 

• They test it against life’s “rocks” to see if Jesus can cut it!
  • They run the saving message through a T-Bar experiment.
  • “Worries of the world” choke the superficial version of “faith.”
    • In fact, someone’s state of heart is worse off than before, and this is perhaps where more of the professing church most categorically is!

2. Rocky soil

[KEY] Most immediately reject the Word but then there are those with “rocky soil” faith.

• People with shallow soil.
  • Rocky soil, not rock mixed soil.
    • Underlying limestone beds underneath the soil.
      • Covering with rock hindering roots.
      • Shallow roots cannot absorb nutrients.

[Illus] Like my hill that cannot sustain a good grass area on the side of the shrubbery. The roots with depth feed everything but the shallow rooted grass, compared to thick, lush grass elsewhere. I used to take the dry patches personally, believing I had not cast enough seed.

• Common dynamic where someone’s faith is superficial, where the soil is rocky.
  • Soil sitting on a concrete floor, so the roots remain shallow, forcing all the life of the plant upward, demonstratively, and powerfully.
    • Life is shoots up quickly often making for excitement over someone’s alleged conversion.
      • The question that comes up when someone is suddenly different is whether their faith is deeply rooted.
        • The “immediately” (v. 5) factor is often the tell.
          • Someone instantaneously on fire, should always be tempered with the humility of a patient battle where things progress over a long period of time.
            • Sanctification is a lifelong progression.
            • Running a marathon of perseverance and a true runner will keep running the race when things get difficult.

[Note] “…but when the sun rose, they were scorched” (v. 6).

• When exposed to some real heat makes the new life get “scorched” (v. 6).
  • Burned up. Why?
  • No real root, meaning there is no lifeline to God’s Spirit to keep someone alive when the heat comes on.

[Appl] As the great theologian and former football star, Warren Sapp once said, “Pressure makes pipes break!” When someone’s faith is superficial, then it will be crushed under the weight of life’s trials. Life is filled with hardships and these hardships always prove where someone is and is not with Christ. When someone has Christ, they will bear up under the weight of anything and when they do not, their legs will invariably wobble.

3. Thorny soil

[Note] The third soil is where “Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them” (v. 7).

• Now, moving away from having no root, no lifeline where someone’s faith gets burned up, this person’s faith is in a circumstance where “thorns choke it out!”
  • Will unpack the meaning of the “thorns” later but just to say, “thorns” represent the internal temptations of “worrying” and “self-deception” (cf. v. 22).
    • Rocky soil faith points to no lifeline to the HS when trials come.
    • Thorny soil faith points to someone operating by the flesh when trials come!
      • Both versions of faith do not survive life’s pressure.
      • Pressure presumed and promised to come.

 

• Thorny soil looks fine on the outside.
  • Instead of superficial shallowness.
  • Soil appears deep and appears weedless.
    • Thorns cut down or pulled out.
    • But the soil is fibrous, where old roots send up new shoots.
      • Weeds grow with speed, outrun few good seeds.
      • Weeds are also stronger, than new buds.

[Appl] Relying on Old Habits as means of survival! This does not work and tangles and strangles someone’s alleged new faith. Old plant life returns to choke the New visitor!

• Thorny soil is the most deceptive soil.
  • You believe you are just fine.
  • But your theology is misguided.
    • Your focus is on self!
    • And this chokes you out!

 

[Appl] Last two soils have been the testimony of the church over my lifetime, of the Bible Belt where I came from.

 

4. Good soil

[TRANS] Verse 8 gives the final soil. Good soil, receptive soil, true saving faith soil.

• The principle is clear.
  • Good soil always yields fruit.
    • The other soils will not produce anything lasting. Whatsoever.
    • No half-measure salvation.

 

• The first soil, hard ground, is easy to diagnose as being dead.
  • Satan has those people, and it is clear their hearts are in his hands.
    • Now the other soils are not as clear.
    • Someone’s profession of faith, when under the fire of trials or internal struggle will just collapse.

 

• But when someone’s faith is “good soil” there will be activity.
  • Something will sprout up and some roots (even small ones) will shoot down.
  • There will be a lifeline the guides are person to produce fruit, however large or small.

 

• Levels of fruit vary.
  • Palestinian farmer predicted an 8% yield.
    • Listing: “a hundred, some sixty, some thirty” (v. 8), takes personal performance off the table.
      • 100% would be unthinkable!

 

• “To the bird, weather, weeds, all losses have been repaid!” [Spurgeon]

 

• Spiritual fruit is never a contest over how much or little you can produce. Never.
  • Question: “Is there any discernable fruit in your life or someone else’s life at all?”
  • If you have the HS, you will naturally produce the “fruit of the Spirit” (cf. Gal. 5:22).

 

• Connected to the vine, branches will produce fruit (cf. Jn. 15).

 

• No fruit means you are one of the other three soils.

 

• Fruit means you are the fourth soil.

[KEY] Painting with broad brush strokes, everyone on the planet is in one of these 4 categories.

• And each category is created by responded positively or negatively to the Word.

[Illus] I was interviewed by someone in a doctoral program on the issue of evangelistic preaching. Basically, whether evangelistic preaching is valid and necessary. What is it and how does it work?  Should you enforce altar calls, and what is more effective, one on one evangelism or preaching the Gospel to a crowd. My answer to all these questions can be summarized with one question, “Did you throw seed?”

[Illus] If you do not throw any seed down on your backyard, then there will never be any grass. The method of preaching, conversing, drawing the hook, being effective, calling people the altar is all immaterial if no seed is thrown. The seed is the Word of God.

[Illus] If you do not preach the Word to someone, either “one on one” or in a group, this is like standing in a yard of dirt with a bag of seed, where you are do everything else in the dirt but drop seed. You can shout at the dirt, cry over the dirt, tell jokes at the dirt, dance on the dirt, moving the dirt all around, organize the dirt, built with the dirt, make mud with the dirt, rake some of the dirt up to the stage! And, if you never take the time to throw real seed on the ground, NO GRASS WILL GROW!

[Illus] It’s like being on the side of the bank, where you have every intention of dip netting, but you will not lower your net down into the water. Guess what? No fish! If your net’s not down, you will not get a fish! The point is that we are called to get the Word out, but the Word is always what does the work! 1 Peter calls the Word, “the imperishable seed!” (cf. 1 Pet. 1:23). This seed and this seed alone is what transforms a receptive heart!

^ESV  1 Peter 1:23 ^asince you have been born again, ^bnot of perishable seed but of imperishable, through ^cthe living and abiding word of God; (1Pe 1:23 ESV)

[TRANS] Verse 9 is an appropriate capstone, “He who has ears, let him hear” (v. 9).

• Christ statement is one of fact.
  • X not mocking spiritual deafness!
    • Saying, “You need more than human understanding, to grasp it!”
    • For this to have meaning!

 

• The point of parables! Answering, “Why Jesus taught this way” and “What this seminal parable means!”
  • We will plum the depths of this foundational parable!
  • And its meaning!
    • These define how we understand the times.
    • How we understand everyone around us, in our lives.

[Conclusion] Paul’s version of an Invitation invites a 4 soils response.

^ESV  Acts 17:30-34 ^aThe times of ignorance ^bGod overlooked, but ^cnow he ^dcommands all people everywhere to repent,

³¹ because he has fixed ^aa day on which ^bhe will judge the world ^cin righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and ^dof this he has given assurance to all ^eby raising him from the dead.”

³² Now when they heard of ^athe resurrection of the dead, ^bsome mocked. But others said, ^c“We will hear you again about this.”

³³ So Paul went out from their midst.

³⁴ But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius ^athe Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them. (Act 17:30-34 ESV)

  

[Question] “Do you have ears to hear what this means?” “Which soil are you?”