Matthew 13

Matthew 13.....
Can you imagine the large crowds that keep gathering around Jesus? Makes me think of celebrities. Back in the day I was a huge Def Leppard fan......I had all the cassette tapes,  Tshirts, posters on my wall, and joe Elliott was the lead singer ( and I could have watched him all day on MTV) I'm sure they had big crowds around them too.....but Def leppard is no Jesus and neither is Joe Elliott.  Yes....they could sing and entertain and joe looked good with long hair .....but there is no comparison to Jesus. Jesus is God and could heal and save people. Celebrities can't do any of that.

Anyway....Jesus told a lot of parables. Parables are a story that is to teach us a lesson. Sometimes his parables are hard to understand.....but they are meant for us to dig deeper and find the meaning. The story of the sower......well...in the spring we sow seeds and plant gardens. Here Jesus is talking about his word....the Bible and how we do or don't let it impact our life.
Basically this parable is telling us we need to be like the man planting his seeds on the good soil (the Bible) and it produces a big crop and is fruitful. We need to be wise with our learning and application of Gods word in our life.
Verse 14-15 is from Isaiah 6:9-10
Verse 23 is what we all need to strive to be.....we need to spend time with God in his word and in prayer.....then we will be fruitful and produce well for His glory.

Parable of the weeds.......Christians have to live among non-Christians in this world. We can make such an impact on them. We need to be the light of Jesus to draw them to Him. An explaination of the weeds is found in verses 36-40 of this chapter.

Parable of the mustard seed....the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. One time when we had youth group I bought a container of mustard seeds. I still have the container if you'd like to see just how small they are. My husband and I put a small amount in some kids hands for them to see the size. Some decided to be funny and eat them....my son was one of them and then felt sick afterward. Anyway this is the smallest seed and yet it grows to the biggest plant. This parable is telling us that Christians are among the minority in the world. Yet Christians will grow and expand the gospel to all nations.
Verse 35 is from psalm 78:2

Parable of the hidden pearl and treasure......the kingdom of heaven is worth more than anything.

Parable of the net.....angels will come at the end of the age to separate the wicked from the righteous.

Verse 54....Jesus hometown is Nazareth.
The people there are questioning Jesus. They don't understand who he is. He knew their lack of faith and verse 58 tells us he didn't do many miracles there because of their lack of faith. What a shame.