Carey's Bible Study Notes
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the parables
life of christ: matthew 13:1-23
galilean ministry: the parables
introduction
One of the unique features of Jesus� teaching ministry was His use of parables. The most common definition of parable is still probably the best one: it is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. The word "parable" itself means "to cast alongside." In using a parable, Jesus is wanting to communicate a spiritual truth to people. He "casts" an illustration from everyday life "alongside" the spiritual truth in order to illustrate it. The focus of the parable should be the spiritual truth(s) contained in the parable.
In order to understand the purpose of the parables, we need to understand the context in which Jesus spoke them. At the beginning of Jesus� ministry, He did not speak in parables. Rather He spoke to the crowds forthrightly. By the time Jesus begins to speak in parables though, a radical shift has occurred in the crowds and in their attitude towards Jesus. Two episodes right before the parables illustrate this shift. In Matthew 12 when Jesus is speaking to the Jewish religious leaders, they reject Him outright and claim that He is speaking the words of Satan and performing miracles in the power of Satan. (It is at this point that Jesus claims the Jews are committing the unpardonable sin). Right after this episode, Jesus� family tries to take Him back home with Him because He is embarrassing them. They claim that He is quite mad and needs to return with them (see Mark 3:20, 21 which forms part o of this context). It is at this point in the Matthew story that Jesus begins to speak in parables.
The parables have a two-fold purpose: first, to reveal God�s truth to His people and second, to conceal truth from those who have heard Him and rejected Him. Whereas such a purpose may seem harsh to us, we need to remember that Jesus did not begin speaking in parables. He only spoke in parables after He had spoken forthrightly to the people and after they had rejected Him. We need to make sure that when God is addressing us that we respond positively because God�s reaction to our lack of response is mysterious communication which we cannot understand.
Note that the reaction of the Jews in Jesus� day was not a blip in their relationship with God. It is not as if they had been responding positively to God all along. Jesus quotes Isaiah 6 (in Matt. 13:14-15) which God uttered approximately 800 years earlier. The people had rejected God 800 years earlier, and so He had rejected them by shutting their eyes and hardening their hearts. He did not want any shallow repentance on their part. He would rather they outright reject Him than to turn to Him with a shallow repentance. Jesus told the church at Laodicea that He would rather they be cold instead of lukewarm. When Jesus confronts a lukewarm believer, He simply wants to "vomit" them out of His mouth, vomit being the literal translation of the Greek word in this passage. By speaking in parables, Jesus was putting into practical application the principle: "Don�t cast your pearls before the swine."
Why would Jesus do such a thing? Speaking in parables vindicates God in judgment. If nobody ever accepted Jesus or obeyed God, then God would be responsible for man�s failure because apparently He had done a bad job of creating mankind. The fault than would have been with the Creator than with the creature. The author of Hebrews brings out this thought when he discusses Noah: "By faith, Noah being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness which is by faith" (Heb. 11:7). The fact that at least one man followed God proved that the fault lay not with God and the way He created people but with people themselves. The fact that many understand the parables proves that they could be understood. What prevented people from understanding them was their lack of faith. The spiritual principle is this: the more you obey God, the more He reveals to you; the less you obey God, the less He reveals to you.
There is probably a further purpose though in the parables. Jesus is hoping that those who do not understand will be frustrated at their lack of understanding and will seek at any cost to understand, even the cost of giving up self and committing themselves to Jesus. All that it will take for those people to understand is to commit themselves to Jesus as Lord of their lives.
the parable of the soils (matthew 13.1-9)
The first parable Jesus gives is the Parable of the Soils. Some name this the Parable of the Sower; however, the focus is on the soils and not on the sower. Once the sower has sown the seeds, you do not see anymore of Him. According to Jesus this is the primary miracle (Mark 4:13). Jesus informs the disciples that if they do not understand the meaning of this miracle, then they are going to fail to understand the meaning of the other miracles.
Jesus gives this miracle in order to address a burning issue in Jesus� day and one which applies to our day as well. One of the main objections to the truth of Christianity is that the Jews for the most part did not accept Jesus as the Messiah in the kingdom of heaven. The argument runs like this: since the Jews are God�s people, then they would have been able to identify who the Messiah was. The fact they claimed Jesus was not the Messiah proves that He was not. With this parable Jesus explains why the Jews rejected Him. The problem lay not with Him but with them! This parable holds meaning for us as well today. Why is it that each Sunday out of a town of 23k, about only 2k are involved in Bible study and worship? Why is it that out of those 2k, only some are living out of an obedient relationship to Christ? This parable explains this phenomenon operating in our society and church today.
In order to understand the different parts of the parable, a person needs to understand the methods of sowing and farming in first-century Israel. Today we plow the fields, sow the seed, and then cover the seeds. Not so in Jesus� day. The sowing came first, and then came the plowing. This saved the people time and effort since it eliminated one stage of the sowing process. This process though created problems. If you don�t plow the fields first, you don�t know where the good soil is and where the bad soils are. For example, first-century Israel did not have a modern network of roads. The only true roads were those built by the Romans to connect major cities and military installations. When these roads were not present, the Jews simply made their own paths by walking across the fields. Some of these paths became extremely hard. As a result, the seed would hit the path and lie exposed with the result that the birds would come and devour the seed.
Another characteristic of Israel is that it has an abundance of limestone. In many places there is a thick layer of soil above the limestone which allows for the growth of plants. In other areas though, only a thin layer of soil covers the limestone so that the hard ground lies just beneath the surface. As a result, the seed which goes into the ground germinates rapidly because of the heat of the rock directly beneath it. The problem is that it cannot produce a good root system because of the rock just beneath it. The plant grows up like a weed which gets its nourishment from the air and not from the ground. When the scorching sun rises, it withers the fragile plant.
Also, it is hard to detect where weeds are going to grow up. The seeds and roots to the weeds remain hidden from the eyes of the sower, and as a result, the sower sows seed in the vicinity of the weeds. Before the seed can produce a plant, the thorns have already grown. They choke the new plants and destroy them.
Finally, there is the good soil which produces a yield of 30, 60, and even 100. These are remarkable yields in light of the fact that in ancient Israel a yield of only 7 or 8 was normal.
interpretation of the parable (matthew 13.18-23)
Of all the parables, Jesus explains only this one in all 3 Gospels. According to Jesus the Sower sows the seed which is the word about the kingdom of God. This word is the good news that Jesus the king has come to inaugurate God�s kingdom of salvation in the world. The four soils upon which the seed falls represent the four different kinds of people who respond to that word.
First, notice that the Sower sows indiscriminately. The Sower does not test the soil before He sows upon it; neither does He take an uneducated guess. He simply sows EVERYWHERE in order to get the best harvest he can get. Whereas if he did sow discriminatingly, He might save some seed from being wasted, it is also true that He might fail to sow seed upon some good soil and thereby limit the number of crops he might otherwise get. The purpose is to get the most number of crops, not save seed.
We need to let this principle operate in our ministries. Many times we tend to be selective in whom we evangelize or to whom we minister. We think, "That person would make a good Christian or a good church leader (friend, etc.)" and concentrate all our efforts on that person. On the other hand, we think, "That person would never want to become a Christian or really grow and mature as a Christian." The truth is that we are purely judging according to appearances and we won�t know until we�ve actually sown the seed. Early in my youth ministry I made this mistake, thinking that this young person had to be involved or be a leader in order for the ministry to be successful. The wild thing was that many times the person I insisted on being involved caused the most number of problems in that ministry. Later I learned to relax, sow indiscriminately, and let God bring forth His harvest.
Notice also that although the seed does not produce a harvest in each instance, the failure lies not with the seed but with the soils. To be sure, ministers of the Word need to share that Word accurately and out of their relationship with God; however, after they have done that, the responsibility then lies squarely upon the shoulders of the listeners. It is not B.F.�s, Chuck�s, Jeff�s or my fault that people do not live for Christ. None of us have ever told people to quit reading their Bibles or stop attending worship services. None of the four of us have ever told people to live lives of sin. The 3 bad soils got the same Word the good soil received; the difference is that the good soil responded properly. The good soil got as much sun as the second soil got and it had the same birds hovering it that the 1st soil had. The difference all lay in the soil and the way it responded.
Notice also that the same principle applies to Christians as well as to non-Christians. For most of our lives we had better be the good soil; otherwise, we need to check to make sure we really are that good soil. From time to time though we all function like one of the other 3 soils. When that happens we stop hearing God�s Word and stop seeing Him operate in our lives in a wonderful way. When that happens, all we need to do is repent and start obeying the Word God does send our way.
The first soil represents the hardened heart. Notice that Jesus does not say why the heart is hard. It doesn�t matter that it�s hard. What matters is that it is hard and that it is preventing God from speaking to that person and operating in his/her life. We spend so much time excusing our hard hearts because of our mean ol� parents or some traumatic experience in our childhood that we don�t change and we don�t get to hear God�s Word. Whatever has hardened our hearts needs to be dealt with so that our hearts can become supple and responsive to God�s Word.
The second soil represents the shallow person. This person joyfully responds positively to God�s Word and yet falls away the moment things start getting bad. Maybe non-Christians persecute that person; maybe there is a death of a loved one and that person is angry at God because of that death. Someone once told me that God would not let their best friend die since He had taken away one of their loved ones just recently. Let me tell that God will allow just that very thing to happen. We need to remember that when Jesus inaugurated the kingdom of God, He did not abolish Satan�s kingdom. Sin and death are still here because Satan�s kingdom is still operating. What is true is this: one day there will be nothing but Jesus� kingdom, and in that day there will be no more death and sickness. But not until then! (If God allowed His Son Jesus to die the death that He died on the cross, what makes us think that God will spare us from lesser fates?)
The third soil represents the person who joyfully receives God�s Word and yet strays from it because of the lure of riches or the anxieties of the world. That person sees all the material things in the world and focuses on getting them. That person is not satisfied with their house, their career, etc. because they do not measure up. Others worry too much. I had a relative who was always depressed around October. She felt that each October was her last October to live. A long time ago several of her loved ones had died, and they had all died in the month of November. She just felt that October was going to be her last month before she died that November. She lived to be in her 90�s. That kind of fear is debilitating and prevents us from hearing God�s Word. When she stopped worrying, her relationship with God really developed.
The truth is that there are several things in our world which should cause us to worry. Without the presence of God I would worry all the time too; however, it is also true that God is our loving Father who does control the universe. As Oswald Chambers once wrote, "Our fears are wicked." Why? Because they reveal that we believe that either God does not care for us or that He won�t step in on our behalf when we need Him. That really is an insult to God. It would be like accusing me of not caring for Nathan and Molly. Such an accusation would really sting.
Note that these 3 soils are representative and not exhaustive. There are other issues in addition to these 3 which prevent people from hearing God�s Word and bringing forth a harvest. Some people are power hungry. Others have sexual addictions, while others are obsessed with getting fame for themselves or for their children. Some people are so shallow in that they exalt work at the expense of their relationship to Jesus Christ. That place of employment may fire me, go under, or become a bitter place to work. Why give my life to that when it will ultimately fail me. The truth is that one day that place of work, that place of recreation or entertainment will be no more. All that will be left is the kingdom of God. Do I really want to give my life to something which ultimately will not last and which will ultimately not fill the needs of my heart?
The fourth soil produces a harvest of 30, 60, and 100. Since the regular harvest normally yielded only 7-8 times the amount of seed sown, this harvest is quite remarkable. Well, God wants us to reap this kind of abundant harvest. Jesus said, "I came that they might have life and might have it abundantly!" God doesn�t want us to subsist on peanut butter and crackers. He wants us to dine spiritually on filet mignon and chateau-briand. Not only will we reap this harvest spiritually, but others will benefit from the harvest we experience. The best kind of evangelism is living this abundant life in the presence of non-believers. We�re not talking about living a good life; we�re talking about living God�s life in front of others. They can manufacture a good life; they cannot manufacture God�s life. Experiencing God�s life in the believer may lead them to hunger for that life and lead them to salvation.