Sunday

Genius At Work


This is the genius of Jesus! First, He has incomparable power to discern spiritual truth. Second, He possesses a unique ability to observe and analyze human behavior.

And most important to His students, the Teacher has the intellect to organize and communicate His wisdom in easily understandable ways.

This is the genius of His parables! They brilliantly unite spiritual insights with everyday things. Truths are memorable as the Teacher ties them to common things already firmly embedded in our minds.

Uncomplicated little parables, yet there is truth concealed in them. Hidden to all but real students who rely on the Teacher for their meaning!

Marvel! This is Genius at work! That’s why He’s the Teacher!

Jesus taught many parables that day, but Matthew records only one of them. It is a simple story about a farmer. But for inquiring students there’s more to the story, as we shall see later.

Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore.

Then he told them many things in parables, saying: "A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.

Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.

Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

He who has ears, let him hear."

5 comments:

  1. It's a great, and as you said, uncomplicated parable, and it does describe well the speading of the Word , but doesn't it tend to isolate all other "not-so-receptive" soils? Can't you still have God in your life even though your degree of responsiveness is different from that of others?
    Your articles "Time Out" & "Gotcha" communicated the theme of grace & humility so well...

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  2. I agree with you. People can have God in
    their lives with different degrees of
    responsiveness to Him. Individually as
    well, we experience different seasons when
    our receptivity to God is higher or lower.
    I just took all of this to be the different
    ranges of fruitfulness Jesus talked about -
    100,60,30. But I'm not sure about this.

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  3. In the evenings I go to Delta Junction (about 80 miles away) and preach at a home church, and other men take the evening services here at Eielson.

    Though I wasn't here, they used these scriptures tonight for the lesson, and they noticed, although the weeds choked the other plants, they didn't necessarily die - but were unfruitful. A plant can be scortched and if watered, may be revived. So, maybe if the plants can hold on until the rains come, or someone takes some rocks away, or until someone pulls the weeds...

    On the other hand, what are we doing to prepare the soil? Sometimes I think we try to sow to concrete! Maybe we need to till the soil and add some nutrients before we sow the seed!

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  4. Talking about fruitfulness... This concept is obviously hugely emphasized in the New Testament, and is widely preached by Protestant churches, so, on one hand, it seems that there is an implicit meaning there that you have to go and make disciples or otherwise you are not a good Christian?

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  5. Maybe that's true. But how to make disciples? Not everyone has the gift of teaching. Some do.
    Maybe the best way for most of us to make
    disciples is to work at being a good one
    ourselves. But too often people seem more interested in what others are doing or not
    doing, instead of focusing on their own lives. Regardless of where we come down on
    this question, can we agree that our
    greatest mission field is our own heart.
    Jesus seemed to indicate that if we developed
    love in our hearts for one another, everyone
    would "know." we are His students. Maybe this is how everyone really finds out and becomes a
    disciple. If so, what's our part? Talking or becoming?

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