OUR FATHER WHOSE WORD IS SOWN ABROAD TO GAIN A GREAT HARVEST

Matthew chapter 13 verses 1 - 9 says this;

1 On the same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea. 2 And great multitudes were gathered together to Him, so that He got into a boat and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.

3 Then He spoke many things to them in parables, saying: “Behold, a sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them. 5 Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. 

6 But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. 7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them. 8 But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 9 He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

Interestingly, the events this passage describe begin on the same day on which the events at the end of the previous chapter occured. 

While teaching the multitudes who were following Him, Jesus had a confrontation with the pharisees regarding their demand to be shown a supernatural sign in order to validate what He was teaching. Jesus denied their request and called the pharisees and evil and adulterous generation who would be judged by history.

The political shockwaves that resulted, motivated Jesus' family to come  to His meetings to pursuade Him to go home with them to save Him from the wrath of the powers of the time.

Jesus, left the house and went to sit by the sea where the crowd followed Him. To avoid getting overun, Jesus got onto a boat and began to speak to the people on shore from the boat.

He spoke many cryptic parables to the crowd but the one recorded in this passage is the famous parable of the sower who went into a field to sow and as he scattered the seeds, they fell in four distinct environments where four distinct outcomes were observed;

• On the wayside where people walked
• Birds devoured the exposed seeds
• On stony shallow soil
• Seeds germinated quickly but soon died
• Among thorns
• Seeds were choked by competition
• In deep good soil
• Seeds took root and yielded a harvest

This parable marks a change in gear for the Lord Jesus. Up to this point, He had been teaching about the kingdom of God, its moral structure and its code of conduct.

In this passage, Jesus starts speaking about the dynamics of spreading the good news of the kingdom of God with attention to the conditions that affect the results of distributing the word of God among the people.

Even though the stories he was telling the people were relatable because their subject matter was based on familiar agrarian themes, they were mysterious as to their meaning.

In the next section, we will see Jesus' disciples asking about why the Lord was teaching in opaque parables and we will discuss the Lord's explanation for this and His exposition of the parable of the sower.

Amen.

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