Part 1: the Sower
Short Stories of Yeshua • Sermon • Submitted
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· 10 viewsThe Kingdom of God is not about...it is about the Someone that all of Israel's sages, prophets, kings and righteous were hoping for and He believed everyone deserves a chance but knows only some will take the risk. He is offering Himself instead of everything else so that you can be the remnant grown from the seed.
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The Sower
The Sower
Today, I want to give you a reason to reconsider faith, more specifically Jesus. Jesus came to offer the world God’s irresistible kingdom. He was not coming to replace God’s Kingdom with something different but to reveal the path to the Kingdom that had been lost.
Against all odds, a group of Jewish blasphemers and recent convicts by Jewish law, somehow started a movement so powerful that nothing anyone could do could stop it. Listen, they had no buildings, no military, no political authority but despite all the odds being stacked against them there movement took the world like a fire to dry hay in west Texas. There movement was so powerful it made ruler, actually generations of rulers, from the most powerful Empire in the Rome sit up, pay-attention and feel threatened by this movement. The people who had biggest buildings, largest military, and most influential political machine in the world were threatened by a group that had none of this.
What did they have? Stories, the short stories of Yeshua. You are going to say, “No, they had his teachings!” Yes but the stories won the day. When you study Matthew, Mark, and Luke the most repeated items in all three Gospels are the short stories of Yeshua, we call them parables. Soren Kierkegaard said, “Parables conceal in order to reveal.” What he meant was that parables bait you in, get you to agree with them, like somehow they are proving your position, and just at the moment you feel like you are standing on firm self-righteous ground it pulls the rug out from under you. Like when Nathan told David the story of a wealthy rancher who stole a little lamb from a poor man. David was inflamed at the greed, the shaming, the atrocity of it. And it was at that moment when David was calling for this man to be hamstrung Nathan the prophet says, “You are the man!”
The best definition of a parable that I can give you is that it is what you need to hear but don’t want to hear. These early Jewish followers of the Messiah set the world on fire with parables, the short stories of Yeshua. They went around telling the story of a man that everyone called an enemy who treated his enemies like they were family. They told stories about an outlandish shepherd chasing down one sheep to the detriment of 99. The told stories and parables and the world responded.
Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish follower of Messiah and Professor of New Testament and Jewish studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School said, “The followers of Jesus, like Jesus himself, were Jews, and Jews knew that parables were not mere children stories or some statement of proverbial truth.” She goes on, “They knew that parables and the tellers of parables were there to prompt them to see the world in a different way, to challenge, and at times to indict.”
Parables are speech in action, they are sucker punches straight to the groin. They are like a chiropractor who suddenly snaps and cracks your neck to bring your body into alignment. Here is the problem, and it is not new, we have taken the arms of the boxer, we have taken the teeth out of the lion, removed the blade from the lawn-mower and turned the parables into mundane stories that rise to the level of children’s maxims: be nice to strangers.
This is an old problem. A problem so old that by the year 380 AD the powerful Roman Emperor Theodosius I at the council of Thessalonica issued an edict that made Christianity the sole and the official religion of the Roman Empire. Now that is amazing to me. It took about 350 years and we were no longer challenging Empires we were now the pawns in the Empires quest for dominance and power.
I know some people would say, “No, Rabbi Michael, you got it wrong. This was a good thing. The Empire that crucified the Messiah was now embracing the cross.” Let the fruit speak for itself because after this Christianity will become known as the most violent, cruel, racist, bigoted religions in the world and that shadow is still being cast.
I am not like many messianic rabbis who say that Roman rulers hijacked our faith, they did not hijack we gave it away, we took away its teeth. And if we want to see renewal of our faith, a renewal of our lives, transformation in our homes as well as our country it is going to start by recapturing the powerful messages contained in Yeshua’s short stories, His parables.
Yeshua used His parables to challenge what you touch and what you avoid, what you see and what you are blind to, what you hear and what you are deaf to, what you taste and what you refuse to eat, what you praise and what you scorn.
The parables, if understood, will open your eyes to see as God sees so you can do as God says.
The parables are not offering an and. Your thoughts about love and …Your thoughts about forgiveness and … Your thoughts about money and… Your brand of Judaism and...
He was offering an instead of. He came to offer a counter Kingdom, way of living, and loving others. He did this with short stories often called parables.
One of the most well-worn, well-known, and mis-used parables is the one that is the “key” to all the other parables. It is the only parable that is given an official title by Yeshua:
“You then, hear the parable of the sower.
For whoever has, to him more will be given and he will have plenty. But whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.
Ha-Foke-Bah
Ha-Foke-Bah
Ha-Foke-Bah
De-Cola-Bah
Ha-Foke-Bah
Ha-Foke-Bah
Mashiach-Bah
Turn-it and turn-it, all you need is in it.
Turn-it and turn-it, the Messiah is in it.
We need a little context for this parable, really, all eight of the parables in this chapter. We will come back and visit others of these parables in this series but let’s get the context:
On that day after Yeshua left the house, He was sitting by the sea. And large crowds gathered around Him; so He got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd stood on the shore. And He told them many things in parables, saying, “Behold, a sower went out to spread some seed.
Matthew 13:1-3
Timeline
You have heard me say that the most important three words you can learn in Bible study is Context, Context, Context. We need context, it helps to resolve the riddle of this parable. “That day” starts all the way back in Chapters 11-12. We might call it the day of Shabbat and it probably started Sundown Friday and continues through all of Saturday. It starts with Yeshua responding to John the Immerser’s doubts about Yeshua claims and Yeshua’s call to all to take His yoke and learn, then the Jewish leaders get angry with Yeshua’s disciples for picking grain on Shabbat, and they totally loose it when Yeshua heals a man on Shabbat and they say he is doing miracles as a false prophet or messiah operating by the power of Satan not of God, then Torah scholars and Scribes demand a sign to validate Yeshua, and the final scene is Yeshua’s relatives seeking him out in the midst of his teaching the crowds and the disciples with the implication that they are trying to pull him down and possibly rescue him from the firestorm that is brewing all around him.
There are Four Scenes
And He told them many things in parables, saying, “Behold, a sower went out to spread some seed.
As he was scattering the seed, some seeds fell by the road; and the birds came and ate them up.
Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they didn’t have much soil. They sprang up immediately, because the soil wasn’t deep.
But when the sun came up, they were scorched; and because they had no roots, they withered away.
Other seeds fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew and choked them out.
But others fell on good soil and were producing fruit. They yielded a crop—some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
Matthew 13:
I know that when the crowds and the disciples heard this it was more than a gut punch, it was a stinging indictment. Remember, this parable is not about soils, not about the seed, not about anything but one thing. Remember,
“You then, hear the parable of the sower.
I have heard lots and lots of preaching about this parable and here is a summary of what people have said:
Let the dirt do its work.
Faith’s Seed grows with speed.
Counterfeit Religions
The Harvest will already be there.
“You then, hear the parable of the sower.
This is not about the seeds nor the ground nor the harvest but it is about “the Sower.” So let’s really get Yeshua’s interpretation of the Sower because he gives it in two parts.
It’s starts when his disciples come to him and say
Then the disciples came to Him and said, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”
Matthew 13:
This is a great question. Like Soren Kierkergaard said, “Parable conceal in order to reveal.” And if you are trying to squash controversy, trying to really build up your following why in the world would you ever speak in such cryptic ways that could be so easily taken the wrong way. Why not be more direct, even more clear.
Yeshua answers the question and in this answer lies the first part of the key to understanding this parable. He says
For this reason I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear nor do they understand.
But others fell on good soil and were producing fruit. They yielded a crop—some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
This is one of those statements that on the surface feels like a tautology, self-evident statement. “They don’t know what they don’t know.” What he is saying is “they can’t see the meaning of this parable because they don’t want to see the meaning of the parable.” They don’t want to believe it is true.
I like how the Message Bible captures this section of Matthew it says it like this.
Matthew 13:8
He replied, “You’ve been given insight into God’s kingdom. You know how it works. Not everybody has this gift, this insight; it hasn’t been given to them.
Whenever someone has a ready heart for this, the insights and understandings flow freely. But if there is no readiness, any trace of receptivity soon disappears.
That’s why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they’re blue in the face and not get it.
I don’t want Isaiah’s forecast repeated all over again: Your ears are open but you don’t hear a thing. Your eyes are awake but you don’t see a thing.
The people are blockheads! They stick their fingers in their ears so they won’t have to listen; They screw their eyes shut so they won’t have to look, so they won’t have to deal with me face-to-face and let me heal them.
What don’t they want to believe is true? Why are they sticking there fingers in their ears?
Yeshua is boldly saying that He is the Sower, His own career and kingdom-announcement is the moment towards which all Israel’s history has been leading.
Jesus is implying that his own career and kingdom-announcement is the moment towards which all Israel’s history has been leading
How do we know this is the case?
At this point I awoke, and looked around, and my sleep was sweet to me.
“Behold, days are coming”—it is a declaration of Adonai—“when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and with the seed of beast.
JEr
I will sow her in the land for Myself. I will have compassion on Lo-ruhamah. I will say to Lo-ammi, ‘You are My people!’ and they will say, ‘My God!’ ”
Listen to what he says to the disciples
“But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. Amen, I tell you, many a prophet and tzaddik longed to see what you are seeing and did not see, and to hear what you are hearing and did not hear.”
Part 1: Yeshua is the long-awaited Sower, YHWH in the flesh, that all of Israel’s history, prophets, sages, and righteous ones were waiting for.
And here is the second part, and remember this is a private conversation he is having with just his disciples.
“You then, hear the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and doesn’t understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the one having been sown along the road. “The one sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy. Yet he has no root himself but lasts only a short while; and when trouble or persecution comes because of the word, immediately he falls away. “But the one sown among the thorns, this is the one who hears the word; and the worries of the world and the seduction of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. “Now the one sown on the good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands. He indeed bears fruit, yielding a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty times what was sown.”
So let’s sort out what this all means, let’s see how this would have packed a punch.
Four Scenes Four Responses
Part 2: The Sower takes a chance on everyone but not everyone will risk it all for him.
The real mystery here is that you don’t know what kind of soil you are in until you respond to the Sower.
What do you triangulate into your relationship with the Sower?
You are not expected to understand everything but believe He is the sower.
Then He sent the crowds away and went into the house. His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.”
But answering her, the Lord said, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and bothered about many things;
Luke 10:41
Yeshua said to him, “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.”
One of the Twelve, Thomas called the Twin, was not with them when Yeshua came.
One of the Twelve, Thomas called the Twin, was not with them when Yeshua came. The other disciples were saying to him, “We’ve seen the Lord!” But he replied to them, “Unless I see the nail prints in His hands, and put my finger into the mark of the nails, and put my hand in His side, I will never believe!”
Then He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and look at My hands. Reach out your hand and put it into My side. Stop doubting and believe!” Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”
John 20:
Don’t give up, shoo the birds, away take a gigantic leap of faith, silence the voice fo all those inner critics and return to the Sower.
The parables are not offering an and.
Your thoughts about religion and the Sower.
Your thoughts about security and the Sower.
Your thoughts about relationships and the Sower.
He was offering an instead of.
He was offering an instead of.
He is offering Himself instead of everything else so that you can be the remnant grown from the seed.