The Truth About Parables. (Matthew 13: 1-9)
Introduction - Jesus’ Use of Parables.
Matthew Chapter 12 was a very important chapter in the pattern of the gospel. This is because it shows a definite turning-point in the ministry of Jesus. At the beginning of his ministry, we found him mainly teaching in the hearing of the religious leaders and near the synagogues but now we find him teaching on the seashore. The change is very significant. It was not that the door of the synagogue was as yet finally shut to him, but it was definitely closing. Even so in the synagogue he could still to an extent find a welcome from the ordinary people; but the official leaders of the religious hierarchy were now in open opposition to him.
When he appeared at a synagogue now, it would not be to find an eager crowd of listeners; it would be also to find a critically thinking company of Scribes and Pharisees and elders weighing and sifting through every word to find a charge against him and watching every action in the hope of bringing an accusation against him. It is one of the ironic tragedies that Jesus was blocked from the Church of his day; but that could not stop him from bringing message to the ordinary man and woman. When the doors of the synagogue were closed to him, he took to the open air, and taught people in the town streets, and on the roads, and by the lakeside, and in their own homes. Today still, the man or woman of God who has the real message to deliver, and a real desire to deliver it, will always find a way of giving it to others.
The great interest for many in this next chapter 13, is that here we see Jesus beginning to use in full his characteristic method of teaching by the use of parables. Even before this he had used a way of teaching which always had the germ of the parable in it. The simile of the salt and the light for example (Matthew 5:13-16), the image of the birds and the lilies (Matthew 6:26-30), the story of the wise and the foolish builder (Matthew 7:24-27), the illustration of the garments and the wine-skins (Matthew 9:16-17), and the picture of the children playing in the market-place (Matthew 11:16-17) all of these are sort of proto- parables, in that they paint truth using mental images. However, it is in this chapter that we find Jesus' way of using parables is now fully utilised at its most brilliant. As someone has said, "Whatever else is true of Jesus, it is certainly true that he was one of the world's greatest masters of the short story." Before we begin to study these parables in detail, let us ask why Jesus chose to use this method and what are the advantages of doing it this way.
Firstly, the parable can make abstract truth concrete. Only some people who can grasp and understand abstract ideas; most people think in pictures. We can use lengthy narrative dialogue to try to put into words what a lovely person is like, but in the end, no one would be very much the wiser; but if we can point at someone and say, "That is a lovely person," no more description is needed. We might try and define goodness and, in the end, leave no clear idea of what ideas we have put in people’s minds. But everyone recognizes a good person and good deed when they see them. In order to be a great communicator, every great word must become flesh, every great idea must take form and shape in a person; and the first great quality of a parable is that it turn truth into a picture/image which all men and woman can see and understand.
Secondly, it has been said that all great teaching aims to get us to where we need to be. The root definition of the word educate means to lead someone in a defined direction. If someone wishes to teach people about things which they do not understand, he must begin with the common ground of the things which we do understand. The parable begins with material which everyone can understand because it is within the listeners own experience, and from that it leads him on to things which he does not understand and opens his eyes to things which he has been previously unable to see or understand. The parable is the tool to open people’s minds and eyes by beginning from where they are and leading them to where they ought to be.
Thirdly, the great teaching advantage of the parable is that it catches people attention. The surest way to interest people is to tell them stories. A parable puts truth in the form of a story; the simplest definition of a parable is in fact that it is "an earthly story with a heavenly meaning." People’s their attention cannot be retained, unless they are interested; with most people it is stories which awaken and maintain interest, and the parable is a story.
Fourthly, the parable has the added benefit of enabling someone to discover the truth for themselves. It requires the hearer to be engaged and to think about what is being said. In a sense it says, here is a story, what truth can you find in it? What does this mean to you? Think it out for yourself”. There are some things which we cannot be told because we must discover them for ourselves. Unless we discover truth for ourselves, it remains a second-hand and external thing. Furthermore, unless we discover truth for ourselves, we will almost certainly forget it quickly. The parable, by compelling us to draw our own conclusions and to do our own thinking, at one and the same time makes truth real to us and fixes it in our memory.
An another important aspect of the parable often overlooked is the fact that a parable also conceals truth from those who are either too set in their ways to think for themselves or are too blinded by prejudice to see. It puts the responsibility fairly and squarely on the individual. It reveals truth to those who desires truth; and it conceals truth from him who does not wish to see the truth. In our study of the parables coming up as we press on through Matthew, it is important we take into account two main things.
Firstly, it helps if we must gather detail about the background of life in Palestine, so that the parable will strike us as it did those who heard it for the first time. We must try and place ourselves into the minds of those who were listening to Jesus.
Second, it means that generally speaking a parable will have only one point. A parable is not an allegory; an allegory is a story in which every possible detail has an inner meaning; but an allegory has to be read and studied; a parable is heard. We must be very careful not to make allegories of the parables and to remember that they were designed to make one main truth create a lightbulb moment in the mind of the one hearing it for the first time.
I. The Parable of the Sower
1That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. 2 Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. 3 Then he told them about many things in parables, saying: “The sower went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9 Whoever has ears, let them hear. “
(Matthew 13:1-9 )
Here is a picture which everyone in Palestine would have understood. Here we actually see Jesus using an everyday example that people would understand, by saying. "The Sower went out to sow." Jesus began with something which at that moment they could actually envisage to open their minds to truth which as yet they had never yet seen.
In Palestine there were two ways of sowing seed. Firstly, it could be sown by the Sower scattering it widely as he walked up and down the field. Of course, if the wind was blowing, the seed would be caught by the wind and blown into all kinds of places, and sometimes out of the field altogether.
The second way was a lazy way, was to put a sack of seed on the back of an donkey and cut or tear a hole in the corner of the sack, and then to walk the animal up and down the field while the seed ran out. In such a case some of the seed might well dribble out while the animal was crossing the pathway and before it reached the field and as it circulated to sow the next row.
In Palestine the fields were in long narrow strips; and the ground between the strips was always a right of way. It was used as a common path; and therefore, it was compressed hard like a pavement by the feet of countless passers-by. That is what is meant by the biblical term , wayside, or path, used here, depending which bible version you are reading. If seed fell there, and some was bound to fall there, whatever way it was sown, there was little chance of its penetrating the earth than if it had fallen on the hard path.
The stony ground was not only ground filled with stones; it was what was also a term used to describe what was common in Palestine, a thin skin of earth on top of an underlying shelf of limestone rock. In many place the earth was only a very few inches deep before hard rock was reached. On such ground the seed would certainly germinate; but there was no depth to the earth so as the seed sent down roots in search of nourishment and moisture it would meet only the rock, and would be soon starved to death and die.
Thorny ground is also mentioned. This type of soil was deceptive. When the Sower was sowing, the ground might look clean enough. It is easy to make a garden look clean by simply turning over the soil; but in the ground still lay the fibrous roots of the weeds and grass, ready to spring to life again. Every gardener knows that the weeds grow with a speed and a strength that few good seeds can outgrow. The result was that the good seed and the dormant weeds grew together; but the weeds grew quicker and throttled the life out of the seed.
The good ground was soil that was deep and soft; the seed could gain an entry; it could find nourishment; it could grow unhindered; and in time bring forth an abundant harvest.
II. The Word and The Hearer of the Word
This parable is really aimed at two sets of people.
Firstly, it is aimed at those who heard what he said on that day. It is generally thought by Bible experts that the interpretation of the parable in Matthew 13:18-23 is not the interpretation of Jesus himself given that day, but the interpretation of Matthew himself. It is the interpretation which identifies the different kinds of soil with different kinds of hearers has always held its place in the Church's thought, and must surely have come from an authoritative source like Matthew who wanted to make clear what would have been immediately understood to the gathered group listening at the time
Understood this way we can see this parable warns the hearers that there are different ways of accepting the word of God, and the fruit which it produces depends on the heart of those who receive it. The outworking of any spoken always word depends on the hearers response.
Secondly, there are those who listen with the shut mind. There are people into whose minds the word has no more chance of gaining entry than the seed has of settling into the ground that has been tread hard by many passing feet. There are many things which can shut someone’s mind to the truth. Prejudice can make a person blind to everything they do not wish to see. The unteachable spirit creates a barrier which cannot easily be broken down. The unteachable spirit can result from one of two things. It can be the result of pride which does not think that it needs to learn anything new. Or it can be the result of the fear, fear of new truth and the refusal to think in a new way. Sometimes an immoral outlook or someone’s way of life can also shut their mind to the truth. There may be truths which condemns the things they previously dis, and which accuses the things they currently do. Many people refuse to listen to or to recognize the truth because in a sense it condemns their current way of life, for there are none so blind as those who deliberately will not see.
Thirdly, these there is the listener with the mind like the shallow ground. They are the type who fails to think things through whenever they hear something new. Some people are at the mercy of every new craze. They take a thing up quickly and just as quickly to drop it. They embrace the latest ideas only to drop them when something new comes along. Some people's lives are littered with things they began and never finished. A man or woman can be like that with the word. When they hear it they may appear be swept off his feet with an emotional reaction; but no one can live on emotion for very long. A Christian has a moral obligation to have an intelligent reasoned faith. Christianity makes demand of us, and these demands must be faced and accepted. The Christian offer of Gods salvation is not only a privilege, but also a responsibility. A sudden enthusiasm can always quickly become a dying fire.
Fourthly, there is the hearer who has so many interests in life that the main thing gets crowded out. It is characteristic of modern life that things are becoming increasingly manic and new things crowd in every day. We can become too busy to pray; or becomes so preoccupied with other things that we forget to study the word of God. This business of everyday life can take such a grip of us so that we are too tired to think of anything else. It is not always the things which are obviously bad which are dangerous to us. It is the things which are good, in moderation can become our real worst enemy.
may not that we forget to prayer or do Bible study or neglect meeting with other believers from our life. It can be that we intends to make time for these things, but somehow in our crowded life we never gets round to it.
Finally, there is the individual who is like the good ground. Like the good ground, their mind is open and fertile. Such people are always willing to learn and prepared to listen. They are also never too proud or too busy to listen. They have thought the thing out and knows what this means for them and is prepared to accept it.
They also translate their hearing into action. They produce the good fruit of the good seed. The real hearer is the one who listens, who understands, but also obeys and does what it says.