Sermon Tone Analysis

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:

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:

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

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,

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.

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

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

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

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?

JEr

Listen to what he says to the disciples

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.