Lessons from Matthew 13: Resist the Truth
After learning more about the parables, we must ask ourselves what truths from this study in the gospel of Matthew have we acted upon? Or have we resisted?
People who resist the truth risk fatally hardening their hearts.
The people wanted Jesus’s miracles but refused His message. Therefore God refused to give them continued intellectual understanding of His Word and person.
And so Jesus answered the disciples’ question in Matthew 13:13 by stating that though the people saw Him with their own eyes, though they had witnessed His power and authority over sin and sickness, they still refused to believe that He was the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15.
Though they heard His words, they refused to listen or understand and thus obey His instructions or commands. They were lost and remained in darkness because they refused to receive the light of truth they had been given.
Jesus went on to say that this too was in fulfillment of the words of the prophet Isaiah.
The people had come in droves to hear Jesus’s words and there are those today who go to church, or a Bible study, or who join in ministries and they too refuse to accept and understand the truth of the Gospel.
They hear His words, they witness His miracles, and they refuse to perceive/recognize His hand in them.
Why?
Verse 15 says because their hearts became calloused and their ears became stifled with wrong thinking and false religion. Therefore they closed their eyes to the personal relationship the Father desired to have with them through Jesus Christ! They continued to live in darkness and believe the lies of the evil one.
Otherwise, Jesus said, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts and turn, and Jesus would heal them.
The next word in verse 16 gives us hope: BUT. Jesus said,
But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.
How much more have we today been given?!
Today we have His competed life, recorded in His completed Word, and we have His promised Holy Spirit living and dwelling in us as believers.
Next, Jesus revealed to the disciples the fuller meaning of the parable of the Sower, seed, and soil. He clearly revealed that the problem lies not in the Sower (God, Himself) or the seed (the Word of God) but the within the heart of man.
Jesus went on to describe the different soils:
The first soil is found in verse 19–the soil found along the path. This soil (heart) is hard or calloused. It’s been so impacted by the world and its false theology that not even the truth of God’s Word penetrates it.
This person expresses a heart of indifference and does not understand or seek to understand the truth of the gospel. They make it very easy for the evil one, the devil or his cohorts, to come and snatch away any truth that may shed light into their dark hearts.
Then in verse 20 Jesus revealed the second soil of the heart–the rocky soil. The heart of this person receives the words of God with joy and excitement. But all too soon they flounder (don’t continue to read God’s Word or go to church) and then drift away.
Life is not as easy as they thought it might be or their prayers weren’t answered when or how they thought they should be. Because there is no root of faith when trouble or persecution comes in, they fall away. This means there was never really a true heart of conversion.
Next, Jesus described the third soil–where the seed is sown among the thorns. This person hears the Word of God, but refuses to trust in it fully. Therefore they become consumed with worry, and concerned with money and the world’s pleasures.
This heart has never died to self and surrendered it all and therefore their faith becomes choked out with worldly perspective. However, no amount of money, worry, or pleasure-seeking vacations can satisfy our hearts or give us true happiness.
But the last soil–the heart that has been cultivated by God and prepared by the giving and receiving of His word–is the one who not only hears but understands God’s Word and treasures it.
This person follows what God commands and because of it, they yield a harvest for God: a crop of 30, 60, 100 times what was sown.
Are you such an individual who has not only taken hold of God’s Word for yourself but also truly seeks to help others understand?
God in His Word says this is the responsibility of all believers!
What are you doing to actively advance the cause of Christ in the world in which you live? Won’t you invite others to glean from God and His word for themselves?
Terri Hamman
Faith & Fitness Coach