Matthew 13

Today’s Passage: Matthew 13

Jesus walks out of a house, sits down by the sea, and the crowd presses in so thickly that He has to push a boat out from the shore to get room to speak. And from that boat comes the longest run of stories in the Gospel. Seven parables, two of them explained privately, all of them about one thing: the kingdom of heaven, what it is like now and what it will be at the end. Matthew has been building toward this. The King has been announced, He has taught on the mountain, He has healed and cast out demons, He has been received by some and hated by others, and in the previous chapter the religious leadership of His own nation accused Him of working by the power of the devil. So the teaching changes shape. He begins to speak in stories that reveal and conceal at the same time, and He says so plainly when His disciples ask Him why. The chapter opens with a farmer flinging seed across four kinds of ground. Then a field where an enemy has sown weeds among the wheat, and servants told to keep their hands off until harvest. Then a mustard seed and a woman’s batch of dough, two pictures of something small that will not stay small. Then, indoors and away from the crowd, the explanation of the weeds, running out to the end of the age, the furnace, and the righteous shining like the sun. Then treasure in a field and a pearl worth everything a man owns. Then a net dragged up the beach and the fish sorted. And then, at the very end, He goes home to Nazareth, and the people who knew Him best hear the least of anyone in the chapter.

As you read, hold this: The King scatters the word of His kingdom over all kinds of ground, and how a heart receives it now is what the harvest at the end of the age will find.

Matthew 13:1–9 (BSB)

¹ That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea. ² Such large crowds gathered around Him that He got into a boat and sat down, while all the people stood on the shore. ³ And He told them many things in parables, saying, “A farmer went out to sow his seed. ⁴ And as he was sowing, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. ⁵ Some fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. ⁶ But when the sun rose, the seedlings were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. ⁷ Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the seedlings. ⁸ Still other seed fell on good soil and produced a crop—a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold. ⁹ He who has ears, let him hear.”

See the scene before you hear the story. He sits down, which is what a teacher did in that world when he was about to teach with authority, and He sits in a boat because there is no room left on the beach. Then He starts talking about farming, and every head on that hillside would have followed Him without effort, because they had all watched a man walk a field with a bag at his hip, swinging his arm. Notice that the farmer is not careless. That is how sowing was done there: the seed went out broadly and the plough came behind it. So the seed lands on four kinds of ground, and the difference in the harvest has nothing whatever to do with the quality of the seed. It is the same seed every time. The path is hard because a hundred feet have packed it, and the birds have it before the plough ever comes. The rocky ground is not a field full of stones but a thin skin of soil over bedrock, and it is the fastest to sprout, which is exactly the trouble: heat rises through shallow soil, the roots find nothing to go down into, and by midsummer the green is gone. The thorns come up alongside and quietly take the light and the water until the wheat stands there alive but barren. And then the good soil, and a harvest so extravagant that Jesus counts it backwards from a hundred. He tells the whole thing in parables (παραβολή) parabolē, pronounced pa-ra-bo-LAY. Strong's G3850, parable; something thrown alongside for comparison. The Greek word is parabolē, built from para (alongside) and ballō (to throw), so quite literally a thing thrown down beside something else for comparison. That is a wonderfully plain description of what the Lord is doing here. He takes a field, a seed, a net, a lump of dough, sets it alongside the kingdom of heaven, and says: look at this, and you will begin to see that. The Greek translators of the Old Testament used the same word for the Hebrew mashal, which covered proverbs, riddles, taunts, and dark sayings, and that wider range matters, because a parable in Scripture is never merely a charming illustration for slow learners. It is a story with a door in it. Anyone can walk around the outside and admire the scenery, but only those who come to the Teacher and ask go through the door. That is why the same parable can leave one man entertained and another man undone. And it is worth saying plainly that a parable is not a code to be cracked detail by detail; each one is thrown down beside the kingdom to make one thing shine. Take the shining thing, and be glad the King loved us enough to teach in pictures a child can carry home. , and He ends without a word of explanation, only a summons: “He who has ears, let him hear.” That last line is not decoration. It is the hinge of the whole chapter. The story has been laid on the table, and now everything depends on what the hearer does with it.

Matthew 13:10–17 (BSB)

¹⁰ Then the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Why do You speak to the people in parables?” ¹¹ He replied, “The knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. ¹² Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. ¹³ This is why I speak to them in parables: ‘Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.’ ¹⁴ In them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled: ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. ¹⁵ For this people’s heart has grown callous; 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.’ ¹⁶ But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. ¹⁷ For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

The disciples ask the question we would ask. Why teach this way at all? And the answer is one of the soberest things in the Gospel. “The knowledge of the mysteries (μυστήριον) mystērion, pronounced moos-TAY-ree-on. Strong's G3466, mystery, hidden secret now disclosed. Mystērion in the New Testament almost never means what our English word mystery means. It is not a puzzle waiting to be solved by clever people, and it is not a secret God is withholding. It is something that was genuinely hidden and has now been opened up, and it can be known only because God has chosen to make it known. Paul uses the word this way constantly: the mystery kept silent for long ages and now revealed, the mystery of God, namely Christ. Here Jesus tells the Twelve that the mysteries of the kingdom “has been given to you,” and the passive verb is doing quiet work, because the Giver is God. What was hidden is that the kingdom would come first in a form nobody expected: not an army, not a throne in Jerusalem, but a sower walking a field, a seed in the ground, a small thing growing quietly among weeds until the harvest. That is why the crowds could watch the King with their own eyes and miss Him entirely. And it is why understanding the Bible is never finally a matter of intelligence. The reason anyone sees is that God opened his eyes. So read your Bible asking, and thank Him for every line of it you have ever understood, because not one of them came to you any other way. of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.” Given. It is a gift, not an achievement, and the disciples had nothing in their pockets that the crowd lacked. Then the principle in verse twelve, which sounds harsh until you have watched it happen: what a man does with light determines whether he gets more of it. Receive what you are given and more comes. Refuse it and even the little you thought you had drains away. So the parables do two things at once. To the hungry they are handles, a way to carry home a truth too large to hold otherwise. To the settled and the scornful they are a closed door, and here is the hard mercy in it: a man who will not have the truth plainly is not given more plain truth to trample on. Then Jesus reaches for Isaiah, and it is the passage the prophet was given on the day he saw the Lord high and lifted up. The wording is close enough that you should hear the original beside it.

"And He replied: “Go and tell this people, ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the hearts of this people calloused; deafen their ears and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”" Isaiah 6:9–10 (BSB)

That is what a calloused heart is. Not a heart that cannot hear, but a heart that has heard so often and turned away so often that hearing no longer registers. The word callous is a picture from the body: skin thickened by repeated rubbing until it feels nothing. And then, right after the darkest sentence in the chapter, comes one of the kindest. “But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.” He does not leave His men in the shadow of the warning. He turns and tells them what they are holding. Prophets who spent their lives leaning toward a day they never saw, righteous men who died with the promise still ahead of them, longed for what these fishermen were watching over an ordinary lunch. If you have ever read the Gospels through and understood even a little of who Jesus is, you are standing where Isaiah wished he could stand. Praise God for that, and do not hold it cheaply.

Matthew 13:18–23 (BSB)

¹⁸ Consider, then, the parable of the sower: ¹⁹ When anyone hears the message of the kingdom but does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path. ²⁰ The seed sown on rocky ground is the one who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. ²¹ But since he has no root, he remains for only a season. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away. ²² The seed sown among the thorns is the one who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. ²³ But the seed sown on good soil is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and produces a crop—a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold.”

Now He walks His disciples back through the field and names the four grounds, and it turns out the parable was never about farming at all. It is about ways of hearing. The hard path is a man who hears the message of the kingdom and does not understand it, and before anything can happen the evil one is there taking it away. Whatever else that tells us, it tells us there is a real enemy with a real interest in what happens in a heart during a sermon. The rocky ground is the quick one, and read what Jesus says about him without flinching, because it is easy to misread. He receives the word “at once” and “with joy,” and he lasts a season, and then trouble comes because of the word and he is gone. And the Lord’s own diagnosis is not that a root died but that there was no root: “since he has no root, he remains for only a season.” What looked like life was green on top of stone the whole time. That is a warning, and it is a warning we ought to take seriously about the difference between an emotion in a meeting and a life joined to Christ. But hear the shape of it correctly. Jesus is not teaching that the Father loses His children. He is teaching that not everything which sprouts is wheat, and He says so before the sun ever rises. The thorny ground is the saddest of the three, because nothing dramatic happens at all. No devil snatching, no persecution, just “the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth,” a slow strangling by ordinary things. Notice He calls wealth deceitful. It promises to solve the very anxieties it creates. And then the good soil, the one who “hears the word and understands it,” and out of him comes fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold. The one difference between the fourth soil and the other three is not effort or temperament. It is that the word actually got in and took hold, and the proof of it is a life that eventually grows something.

Matthew 13:24–30 (BSB)

²⁴ Jesus put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. ²⁵ But while everyone was asleep, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and slipped away. ²⁶ When the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the weeds also appeared. ²⁷ The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ ²⁸ ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. So the servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ ²⁹ ‘No,’ he said, ‘if you pull the weeds now, you might uproot the wheat with them. ³⁰ Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat into my barn.’”

Here is a story for anyone who has ever looked at the state of the world, or the state of a congregation, and wondered what God is waiting for. A man sows good seed. Only good seed. And in the night an enemy walks his field and sows weeds (ζιζάνιον) zizanion, pronounced zid-ZAH-nee-on. Strong's G2215, darnel, a weed that mimics wheat. Zizanion is a specific plant, not a general word for weeds, and the older English versions called it tares. It is bearded darnel, and its whole menace lies in how well it imitates wheat. In the early growth a farmer cannot reliably tell them apart; the blades look the same, the height is the same, and only when the ear forms does the counterfeit show, thin and dark where the wheat is full and golden. Worse, darnel grain commonly carries a fungus that poisons anyone who eats it, so the two cannot simply be harvested together and sorted in the kitchen. And underground the roots of the two plants wind through each other, which is exactly why the master forbids the weeding. Set that beside what Jesus says the weeds are, and the picture is sober and clarifying. There has always been in the visible field of the kingdom a growth that looks like the real thing and is not, and it is not always distinguishable by us, and time is what finally tells. That should make a believer humble rather than suspicious. It is not a call to squint at the person next to you in the pew. It is a call to ask what is actually growing in your own row, and to be glad that the One who will do the sorting sees perfectly and will not make a single mistake. through it and slips away, and nobody sees a thing until months later when the heads form and the truth comes up out of the ground. The servants’ first question is the honest one: did you not sow good seed? Where did this come from? And the owner’s answer settles a great deal about how the world got the way it is: “An enemy did this.” God did not sow the trouble in His field. Then comes the servants’ second question, and it is the one every zealous heart asks: shall we go and pull them up now? Of course they want to. It looks like faithfulness. And the master says no, and gives a reason that ought to slow every one of us down: “if you pull the weeds now, you might uproot the wheat with them.” The roots are tangled. Servants pulling weeds by their own eyesight will tear out wheat, and they will never know they did it. So the word is wait. Let both grow together until the harvest. Understand what this parable is and is not doing. It is not telling a church to shrug at open, unrepentant sin among its members; the Lord has other words about that, and Paul had to write a whole letter about it. It is telling us that the final sorting of the world is a harvest, that the harvest has a date, and that the reapers are not us. There is enormous rest in that. You are not the one who has to make the field pure. You are asked to be wheat, and to leave the sickle in the hand of the One whose patience is not indifference.

Matthew 13:31–35 (BSB)

³¹ He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and planted in his field. ³² Although it is the smallest of all seeds, yet it grows into the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.” ³³ He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and mixed into three measures of flour, until all of it was leavened.” ³⁴ Jesus spoke all these things to the crowds in parables. He did not tell them anything without using a parable. ³⁵ So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: “I will open My mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden since the foundation of the world.”

Two short ones now, and they answer the same doubt from two directions. The crowd was looking for a kingdom that arrived with trumpets. What they were getting was a carpenter’s son in a fishing boat with twelve unremarkable men. So Jesus holds up a mustard seed, the smallest thing a Galilean farmer measured out, proverbially small, the seed you would lose if you dropped it. Plant that, He says, and it becomes a tree with birds nesting in its branches. Do not miss how quietly enormous that claim is. The prophets used exactly that image, a great tree sheltering the birds of the air, for a world empire. He is saying the thing you are watching begin in a boat will one day shelter the nations. Then He turns from a man in a field to a woman in a kitchen, and the picture changes from size to reach. She takes leaven and works it into three measures of flour, which is not one loaf but something like fifty pounds of it, bread for a whole village, and then she waits, and there is nothing to see. Leaven does not announce itself. It works in the dark and it does not stop until “all of it was leavened.” That is how the kingdom goes through a life and through the world: not usually by spectacle, but by permeation, quietly and totally. And then Matthew steps back to tell us that all of this teaching in stories was itself written down long before, in a psalm of Asaph: “I will open My mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden since the foundation of the world.” Hidden since the foundation of the world. Think of that. What He is opening His mouth to say in a fishing boat off Capernaum has been in the mind of God since before there was a sea to sail on.

Matthew 13:36–43 (BSB)

³⁶ Then Jesus dismissed the crowds and went into the house. His disciples came to Him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” ³⁷ He replied, “The One who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. ³⁸ The field is the world, and the good seed represents the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, ³⁹ and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. ⁴⁰ As the weeds are collected and burned in the fire, so will it be at the end of the age. ⁴¹ The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will weed out of His kingdom every cause of sin and all who practice lawlessness. ⁴² And they will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. ⁴³ Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.

Notice first how the disciples got this: they came and asked. The crowd went home with a story about a farmer. The men who followed Him indoors and said “explain to us” received the interpretation. That is not favoritism. That is how it has always worked with God, and the door is still open to anyone who will come and ask. And then He gives the meaning, piece by piece, and there is no guessing left. The sower is the Son of Man, that is, Himself. The field is the world. The good seed is not a message here but people, the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one. The enemy is the devil, a real personal enemy, not a figure of speech. The harvest is the end of the age. The harvesters are angels. Now hear the rest of it soberly, because these are the Lord’s own words and He does not speak them lightly. At the end of the age the Son of Man sends His angels to gather out of His kingdom every cause of sin and all who practice lawlessness, “and they will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” This is the gentle Teacher of the Sermon on the Mount, and He will not let us have a kingdom without a judgment. There is a real and final separation, and it is everlasting, and no honest reader of Jesus can file that away. We do not dress it up, and God forbid that anyone should say it with the faintest satisfaction. Say it the way a physician says a hard diagnosis, because the same Lord who warns of the furnace is the One who went to a cross so that sinners need never see it. And then, immediately, the other half, which is just as certain and just as much His word: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Wheat that grew all its life tangled among darnel, unremarkable, often hard to pick out, will one day blaze. Daniel saw it centuries before.

"Then the wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever and ever." Daniel 12:3 (BSB)

“He who has ears, let him hear.” The same line that closed the parable of the sower closes this one, and by now you know what it is asking of you.

Matthew 13:44–46 (BSB)

⁴⁴ The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and in his joy he went and sold all he had and bought that field. ⁴⁵ Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls. ⁴⁶ When he found one very precious pearl, he went away and sold all he had and bought it.

After the furnace, this. Two men, two very different stories, one response. The first was not looking for anything. He is crossing a field, perhaps working someone else’s ground, and his tool strikes something, and in a country that had been fought over for a thousand years, with no banks and armies passing through every generation, burying valuables in a field was simply what people did. He stumbles onto a fortune. The second man is a professional. He has spent his life handling pearls, which in that world outranked almost everything for value, and he knows quality when it is in his hand, and one day he finds the one. The seeker and the man who was not seeking end up doing exactly the same thing. Each sells everything he has and buys. And here is the word in verse forty-four that you must not walk past: joy. “In his joy he went and sold all he had.” This is not a grim transaction, a man gritting his teeth and paying a terrible price for religion. It is a man who has found what he cannot live without and is nearly laughing as he empties the house. That is the only accurate picture of what it costs to follow Christ. Yes, it costs everything, and He never hid that. But nobody who has actually seen the treasure (θησαυρός) thēsauros, pronounced thay-sow-ROSS. Strong's G2344, treasure, a storehouse of valuables. Thēsauros is where our English word thesaurus comes from, and it means both the treasure itself and the place where treasure is kept, the storehouse or strongbox. Jesus uses it a great deal, and always to press the same question: where is your treasure, because that is where your heart already is. On the mountain He told them not to store up thēsauroi on earth where moth and rust destroy. Here He tells of a thēsauros buried in a field worth a man’s whole estate. And at the end of this same chapter He will use the word again, of a storeroom out of which a trained scribe brings new treasures as well as old. Put the three together and the picture is complete: there is a treasure, it is the kingdom, and having found it a man both spends everything to have it and then spends his life bringing its riches out for others. Paul, who had more to lose than most, wrote it as a ledger entry: he counted all he had as loss compared to the surpassing excellence of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord. That is the whole thing. The treasure of the kingdom is not finally a place or a reward. It is a Person, and knowing Him is the wealth. Whatever it costs you, count it again in ten thousand years. experiences the selling as a loss. Ask any believer who gave up something real for Christ whether he feels robbed. He will tell you he traded up and cannot believe his good fortune. And note carefully that neither man earns the treasure or the pearl by his selling. What he does is let go of everything else in order to have it, because once he has seen its worth, nothing else in the house is worth keeping.

Matthew 13:47–52 (BSB)

⁴⁷ Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was cast into the sea and caught all kinds of fish. ⁴⁸ When it was full, the men pulled it ashore. Then they sat down and sorted the good fish into containers, but threw the bad away. ⁴⁹ So will it be at the end of the age: The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous ⁵⁰ and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. ⁵¹ Have you understood all these things?” “Yes,” they answered. ⁵² Then He told them, “For this reason, every scribe who has been discipled in the kingdom of heaven is like a homeowner who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.”

The last parable is told to fishermen, and it is the dragnet, hundreds of feet of it weighted along the bottom and hauled through the water so that it takes in everything, edible and inedible together. There is no sorting while the net is in the sea. The sorting happens on the sand, when the men sit down and go through the catch by hand. That is the same lesson as the weeds, told again in the language of the men He called, and it lands the same way: the mixture now is not a failure of the kingdom, and the separation is real, and it comes at the end and not before. He says it once more, in the same plain words, and once more we take it as He gives it and do not soften it and do not enjoy it. Then He stops and asks them a question: “Have you understood all these things?” They say yes. Whether they understood as much as they thought is another matter, but the answer He gives them is beautiful. A scribe in that world was a man who had memorized and copied and taught the Scriptures for a lifetime. Jesus speaks of such a man “discipled in the kingdom of heaven,” an expert in the old book who has now met the King the old book was about, and He says he is like a householder opening his storeroom and bringing out treasures new and old. Not new instead of old. The Law and the Prophets are not discarded; they are opened up. Everything Israel had been given is still treasure, and now there is more, because the One hinted at on every page is standing in the room. That is the calling of anyone who teaches Scripture, in a pulpit or at a kitchen table: go into the storeroom, and bring out the old riches and the new, and set them before people who are hungry.

Matthew 13:53–58 (BSB)

⁵³ When Jesus had finished these parables, He withdrew from that place. ⁵⁴ Coming to His hometown, He taught the people in their synagogue, and they were astonished. “Where did this man get such wisdom and miraculous powers?” they asked. ⁵⁵ “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t His mother’s name Mary, and aren’t His brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? ⁵⁶ Aren’t all His sisters with us as well? Where then did this man get all these things?” ⁵⁷ And they took offense at Him. But Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown and in his own household is a prophet without honor.” ⁵⁸ And He did not do many miracles there, because of their unbelief.

Matthew put this here on purpose, and it is one of the saddest endings in the Gospel. A whole day of teaching about hearing, four soils, ears that hear and eyes that see, and now He goes home to Nazareth. It was a small place, a few hundred people, everybody’s business known to everyone. He teaches in their synagogue and they are astonished, and their astonishment turns sour within a sentence. Look at what they say, because every word of it is true and every word of it is used to shut the door. Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Yes. Isn’t His mother Mary, and aren’t these His brothers and sisters, whose names we know, who are sitting in this room with us? Yes, all of it. They had the most and it did them the least good. Familiarity had packed the ground down hard, and the seed lay on the surface of it. “And they took offense at Him,” which in the Greek is the word for a stumbling block, the thing you trip over. They tripped over His ordinariness. They could not fit the wisdom and the power together with the boy who grew up on their street, and rather than change their minds about who He must be, they changed the subject. And so the King, whose word calmed the sea and raised the dead, “did not do many miracles there, because of their unbelief.” Not because His power had limits, but because He does not force Himself on people who have decided in advance what He can be. Hold that beside the four soils and you have the whole chapter in one scene. The seed was as good in Nazareth as it was in Capernaum. The ground was different.