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INTRODUCTION
Chapter 13 is the chapter of Kingdom parables.
It contains 7 of Jesus’ parables and all of them have to do with the Kingdom of God.
Today we are going to talk about the parable of the sower.
And it is the first parable and rightly so, because it has to do with entrance into the kingdom of God.
What is a parable?
A parable is a short story that uses things from ordinary life to teach spiritual truths.
It is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.
So look with me at the parable in verses 1-9:
Matthew 13:1-9 “That day Jesus went out of the house and was sitting by the sea.
And large crowds gathered to Him, so He got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd was standing on the beach.
And He spoke many things to them in parables, saying, “Behold, the sower went out to sow; and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up.
“Others fell on the rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil.
“But when the sun had risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.
“Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out.
“And others fell on the good soil and *yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.
“He who has ears, let him hear.”
~Prayer~
There are 4 Different kinds of soils that produce 4 different results
"some seeds fell beside the road”
I want you to imagine someone sowing seeds in a field.
And the field has been broken up with a plow so that the dirt is soft and when the seed lands on the ground it can penetrate that soft soil.
But some of those seeds fell on the edge of the field.
Now the edge of the field is the hard packed ground that has not been worked.
It is nearly impossible for a seed to penetrate that ground so it just sits there on the surface.
And birds who love to feed on these seeds spot those seeds sitting on that hard soil and they swoop in and devour them.
“others fell on rocky places”
Imagine that same field with an area that has a layer of bedrock right under the surface.
The soil on top of that bedrock is soft so the seed can penetrate it, but the bedrock prevents any kind of depth.
So the seed germinates, but since it has no depth of root, it withers as soon as the sun comes out and it dies.
This picture is a place beside my carport.
And if you look real close you can see pea gravel coming through the soil.
That pea gravel is the top of a concrete slab about 1” under the surface.
And because that dirt is so shallow, grass never makes it into the summer because it has no root.
These plants seem alright at first, but they never last because there is not enough soil for the roots to develop and have effective root systems necessary for survival.
“others fell among thorns”
These plants have the soft dirt, they have enough dirt, but its the competition that chokes them out.
Look at this picture of our garden
All of the corn was planted at the same time.
The reason some grew tall and tasseled out is because we took the tiller in between the wider rows and took the weeds out.
The other rows were too narrow so we neglected them and look at the results.
This is what happens when seeds grow amongst weeds.
The weeds are competition for nutrients and water and eventually they choke the plants out and keep them from producing a crop.
This corn on this end will be useless.
As Ashley said, that incredible isn’t that incredible
“others fell on good soil and yielded a crop”
This is soft dirt
It is deep dirt
It is dirt that has had the weeds removed so the plants could grow to maturity.
Only the plants in our garden with those conditions that allow for the seed to grow and produce fruit that we can eat.
That is the parable.
And Jesus stops right there after telling this to the crowd and says no more.
And most of them must have been wondering what in the world any of this has to do with Christianity.
Or what in the world does this have to do with the Kingdom of God.
Look at what He says in (v 9) “He who has ears, let Him hear”
Do you think there were people in that crowd who did not have any ears?
NO!
Jesus is speaking metaphorically!
This is a call to think about the deeper spiritual meaning of this parable.
Its a call to those in the crowd who truly desire to know God and how to enter His Kingdom.
All human ears hear sounds, but there is a deeper kind of listening that results in spiritual understanding.
Some people in the crowd were only curious about Jesus.
They weren’t really interested in Him, just wondering
Others in the crows were looking for evidence to use against him.
They hated Jesus and wanted Him gone!
But some truly wanted to know Him and desired to be a part of His Kingdom.
And were those who cleared their minds and hearts and opened them up to what Jesus had to say.
Which one are you?
There are two kinds of listeners: those who strive to understand spiritual truth and those who do not really care about spiritual truth
Explanation
The disciples ask, “why do you speak to them in parables?”
And I could imagine we have all asked that question before.
Why does Jesus not just tell us plainly instead of teaching things in parables that can be so confusing and difficult to understand.
And we can almost be tempted to think Jesus had ill motives and purposely hid the truth to keep people from knowing it.
But that’s not why He used parables.
By speaking in parables, Jesus separated the committed from the uncommitted.
To understand a parable, you’ve got to put forth effort.
The payoff in a parable is when we are willing to sit down and really think about what it says.
Sometimes you need to get out a dictionary and look up a word.
Or get out a commentary and look up some cultural facts!
And only those who are truly committed are willing to put in that effort.
Look what Jesus says TO THE DISCIPLES: “to you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God”
Who were the disciples?
They were those who were fully committed to Christ!
These were the men who had left their boats, the tax booth that made tax collectors rich, they left their fathers and mothers and friends and even their own lives and had given everything to Christ!
These were the totally committed, and to these it was granted to them to know the secretes of the Kingdom of God.
COMMITMENT IS A PREREQUISITE TO UNDERSTANDING SPIRITUAL TRUTH
If we want to truly know Christ, then we must be fully committed to Him!
If we want to understand Jesus, then we must first fully commit to Jesus!
We must not think we can just show up and God is going to infuse our minds with heavenly things!
It takes an active effort on our part and a genuine desire to know.
When Jesus spoke in parables, he was separating those who really wanted to know Him from those who really didn’t care much.
Which one are you?
What place does knowing God have in your life?
Where is all your effort directed to?
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