Seeds for 09/05/2023 - Matthew 13:10-17
Scripture: The disciples came to Him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”
He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “ ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’
But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”
Observation: Not all parables have the same purpose. Some make the kingdom more plain to understand for everyday people. Luke 15 and the three parables of lost and found—the sheep, the coin, and the sons—come to mind. Other parables function like wisdom riddles, beckoning those who are searching to press into the mystery, wrestle with the vignette, and discover the meaning. Some of the parables in Matthew 13 fall into this category. Still others bite and either convict or enrage, like those that Jesus tells against the religious leaders in Jerusalem encounters between Palm Sunday (Matthew 21) and the Passover meal in the upper room (Matthew 26).
Here, Jesus’s reply to the disciples is intriguing. This passage is located in between the parable of the sower in 13:1-9 and Jesus’ explanation in 13:18-23. One can easily imagine the disciples stupefied by Jesus’ cryptic parable after His earlier straightforward proclamation (“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”) and His mostly didactic instruction in the Sermon on the Mount. What’s with this new style of speech?
The answer is striking. Jesus contrasts the disciples, who have responded to a call to follow Him, with “the people,” who have gathered to listen to Jesus but who may or may not have responded to His preaching and teaching yet. Pairing the quotation from the calling of Isaiah (in Isaiah 6:1-10) with the parable of the sower, the point seems to be that some parables reveal the spiritual condition of the heart, confirming its hardness or offering life to the ones open to receiving it.
The hard truth is that not everyone wants to respond to God. Personally, I’ve got a lot of room for grace when someone experiences such hardships and injustices in life or wickedness in Christians, or those who purported to be, that their capacity to truly hear the Gospel on its own terms is significantly distorted. To be honest, I know of people who’ve dealt with as much evil as anyone who still received the Gospel. Nevertheless, I’m inclined to charity in that circumstance.
Yet an honest reading of this text, harkening back into Isaiah’s calling, suggests that not everyone wants God. Some hearts are calloused toward God and determined to stay that way. Hearing the parable could serve as a wake-up call, but unfortunately that simply wasn’t always the case.
Application:
How can you “tend the soil” of your heart to keep it open to the Gospel message?
What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, keep my heart soft toward you and my soul hungry for more of you. Amen.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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