Meditations in Matthew Thirteen: The Sower

Matthew has prepared us for the parables of Matt 13. He has given us Jesus’s discussions of the Mosaic and messianic ages. Jesus spoke of the age transition in Matt 9.¹ He said the disciples would not finish their mission to Israel before he, the Son of Man, came.² He would destroy the Temple and end the Mosaic age.³ In the previous chapter, Jesus spoke of “this [Mosaic] age” and “the [messianic] one about to come.”⁴

We are ready, therefore, for the parables in Matt 13. Each is “a short, simple story designed to communicate a spiritual truth, religious principle, or moral lesson; a figure of speech in which truth is illustrated by a comparison or example drawn from everyday experiences.”⁵

Matthew 13 contains seven of Jesus’s parables:

1. The sower (Matt 13:1–23)
2. The weeds (Matt 13:24–30; 36–43)
3. The mustard seed (Matt 13:31–32)
4. The leaven (Matt 13:33–35)
5. The hidden treasure (Matt 13:44)
6. The pearl of great price (Matt 13:45–46)
7. The fish⁶ (Matt 13:47–52)

These stories share at least four characteristics. First, they all show us “the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 13:11; 19, 24, 31, 33, 44, 45, 47, 52). “Each of the parables contain[s] some characteristic, or present[s] some aspect of Christ’s kingdom.”⁷ They describe the messianic age.

Second, in each, something valuable is within or among something of lesser importance. The “good ground” exists within the less desirable lands. The “good seed” lies among the tares. Etc. 

Third, each parable distinguishes or separates the good thing from its inferior surroundings. The good fish in the net remain after the culling of the bad, for example.

Fourth, the actors that make the separations are the Son of Man or his agent(s). For example, in the parable of the weeds, the Son of Man sends his angles to harvest the grain (Matt 13:41).

These traits remind us of something Jesus said earlier. The kingdom would “break out” of the Mosaic age with violence. The world would soon see “the violent bursting forth of the kingdom of heaven, as the kernel of the ancient theocracy, through the husk of the Old Testament. . . . This is a figurative description of the great era which had then commenced.”⁸ The wine of the kingdom would burst the wineskins unless someone put it in new bottles (Matt 9:17). A previous post (here) showed the significance of this kingdom bursting-forth.

Jesus is using the parables of Matt 13 to further describe this separation. He envisions the events and conditions of his generation. His parables are about the age transition that would have long-lasting, eternal significance. They pertain to the “last days” of the Mosaic age. That is when God separated the kingdom from its Mosaic-age institutions.

These parables verify our inmillennial prophetic model. It rests on a two-age view of history. “The Jews divided the religious history of the world into ‘this age’ and ‘the future age.’ The ‘future age’ was the one which was to begin at the coming of the Messiah.”⁹ These parables show the transition between these two ages and the consequences of that transition. Inmillennialism is at home in this environment.

This post will deal with the first parable—the parable of the sower (Matt 13:1–23). It will follow Matthew’s natural divisions: the parable itself (Matt 13:1–9); the purpose of the parable(s) (Matt 13:10–17); and the pattern of interpretation Jesus provides for the parables (Matt 13:18–23).

The Parable

Matthew gives the first parable in Matt 13:1–9. It is “the parable of the sower” (Matt 13:18).¹⁰ Our comments here will be brief. We want to conserve space for the next two sections.

Let’s consider how this parable reflects the four common characteristics above. We do not learn from the parable itself that Jesus is speaking about the kingdom. But, he makes this clear in his explanation (Matt 13:19).

The valuable item in this parable is the “good ground” (Matt 13:8). Other, inferior, ground surrounds it: the hardened waysides, the stony places, and the thorn-infested lands.

The parable separates the “good ground” from the others in one important way. It produces fruit and the others do not.

The parable does not identify the person who manifests this difference. He is “a sower.” Jesus will soon reveal his identity.

But the Lord will first make some important general observations. He will describe his use of parables.

The Purpose

The disciples asked Jesus why he spoke in parables. This question allows him to reveal his purpose for speaking this way (Matt 13:10–17). His answers apply to all the parables in Matt 13. 

Jesus says his disciples will understand the parables, but the apostate Jews will not. “It is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.” Many Jews could not believe Jesus’s words because they were not his sheep (John 10:26).

Jesus came to give abundant life to his saints in the messianic age (John 10:10). He says, “For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance.” The elect in Israel had the faith of Abraham. To that faith, God would add more blessing. Those who were “Israelites indeed” (John 1:47) would partake of abundant, messianic-age life.

The apostate Jews had the kingdom during the Mosaic age, but they did not have Abraham’s faith. God would soon take the kingdom from them. Jesus said, “but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.”¹¹ God would take the kingdom from the grace-less Jews and give it to his holy nation (1 Pet 2:9). This transfer would happen in his generation (Matt 21:43; 23:36–37). It would fulfill Daniel’s vision of the saints taking the kingdom during this period (Dan 7:18, 22, 27). 

Jesus’s appeal to prophecy leads us to understand the parables in the context of age transition. He said, “Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.” God had often described unfaithful Israel this way (Isa 6:10; 42:18–20; Jer 5:21; Ezek 12:2). Paul later applied this language to the apostate Israel of his generation (Rom 11:8; cp. 2 Cor 3:14; Acts 28:26–31). No passage applies this language to anyone other than apostate Israel. Jesus used these parables to show the kingdom that would remain after God judged the sinful nation. 

The Lord emphasized this point. He spoke in parables to fulfill a prophecy related to Israel’s hardening in her “last days” (Heb 1:2). Jesus says,

And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. (Matt 13:14–15; emphasis added)

Each of the words in bold type refers to apostate Israel in Jesus’s day. 

John Gill says the prophecy to which Jesus referred pertained to Israel’s judicial blindness. It 

was to go on among them, until the land of Judea was utterly destroyed by the Romans, and the cities and houses thereof left without any inhabitants; all which accordingly came to pass: for that this prophecy refers to the times of the Messiah, and to the people of the Jews, is clear from this one observation made by Christ himself, that Esaias foretold those things when he saw the glory of the Messiah, and spake of him, John 12:40, 41.¹²

The disciples lived inside the nation of Israel. But God had made a difference between them and their unfaithful contemporaries. Jesus says, “But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.” 

A division between Jesus’s disciples and apostate Israel was coming soon. Jesus gave the parables to show the separation that would occur. It would happen during the transition from the Mosaic age to the messianic age.

The Pattern

Jesus interprets two of his parables: the parable of the sower in Matt 13:18–23 and the parable of the weeds in Matt 13:36–43. These explanations establish a pattern that helps us interpret the other parables.

The parable of the sower is about the messianic age. Its seed is “the word of the kingdom” (Matt 13:18). Jesus designed it to reveal “the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 13:11). As we saw above, this is true of all these parables.

The valuable thing in this parable is the “good ground” (Matt 13:23). It represents the persons who receive “the word of the kingdom.” It is their understanding, heart, and affections. This is a picture of the elect in Israel who received the word of the kingdom and believed (Luke 8:40; Acts 2:41).

The non-elect in Israel were a different sort of soil. They had hardened hearts, like the well-worn wayside paths (cp. Mark 6:52). Some of them endured for a while, but then fell away (cp. John 6:65–66). And, “the anxiety of this age”¹³—the Mosaic age—kept many of them from entering the kingdom. They feared exclusion from the synagogue (e.g., John 9:21–23) and other consequences of following Jesus.

The parable distinguishes between the “good ground” and other types of soil. It produced fruit. This fruit-bearing is the mark of an elect person in the kingdom of God (John 15:16). The apostate Jews, whom God was about to judge, lacked this fruit (cf. Matt 3:7–12). The inferior soils represented them well.

Jesus does not identify the sower here but does so in the next parable. “He that soweth . . . is the Son of man” (Matt 13:37). The sower in one parable is the sower in the other.

This association of the sower with the Son of Man enhances one of our propositions above. This parable describes events in Jesus’s generation. He personally sowed the seed of the kingdom in Israel. His sowing separated the “good ground” from the rest in his generation.

Conclusion

The above interpretation does not prevent our application of this parable in our day. Christ still sends his ministers to sow seed. They preach the gospel of the kingdom. This preaching still reveals the kind of soil on which the seed falls. God still prepares “good ground” in the hearts of his elect. They still produce the fruits of the kingdom.

But to apply any scriptural passage, we need first to understand its meaning in its original context. This post has shown the meaning of the parable of the sower in its historical setting. God was about to take the kingdom from Israel after the flesh. Theirs was the unbelief of prophecy (Matt 13:14; cp. Deut 31:16, 29; the song of Moses, Deut 32:1–43; Ezek 12:2; passim).

To fulfill these prophecies, Jesus proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom in Israel’s “last days” (Heb 1:2). His gospel “seed” fell on different kinds of ground. The “remnant according to the election of grace” (Rom 11:5) had good-soil, fruit-producing hearts. The others in Israel had inferior-soil hearts that could not produce “good fruit.”

Because the apostate Jews rejected Christ and his kingdom, God would soon destroy them. He would do so in the “great tribulation” just before the Temple fell (Matt 24:21, 34). This event would leave their house desolate (Matt 23:36–38). Only Jews with “good soil” hearts entered the messianic-age kingdom of God. The separation described in the parables would be a reality.

1. See our posts Meditations in Matthew Nine: Age Transition and Meditations in Matthew Eleven: Age Transition (again)
2. See our post Meditations in Matthew Ten: The Jewish Mission
3. Matt 10:23. Cp. Matt 24:1–3, 27, 30, 34.
4. See Matt 12:32 in Kenneth S. Wuest, Expanded Translation of the Greek New Testament, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961), 30. Also, see our post Meditations in Matthew Twelve: Two Ages
5. Ronald F. Youngblood, F. F. Bruce, and R. K. Harrison, eds., Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1995), s.v. parable.
6. Changed from “the net” on Dec 14, 2018.
7. William Arnot, Parables of Our Lord, William Arnot Study Series (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1981), 31.
8. John Peter Lange, The Gospel According to Matthew, vol. 8 of Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, ed. John Peter Lange, trans. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1960), 206.
9. F. W. Farrar, The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews, ed. J. J. S. Perowne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1893), 54.
10. The image in this post is The Parable of the Sower by Marten van Valckenborch (1535–1612). This file (here) is in the public domain (PD-US).
11. Some explanations of this verse conflict with the doctrine of eternal security. These people had something valuable that could be taken from them. The context suggests it was Mosaic-age covenant status, not messianic-age salvation. Some commentators appeal to Luke 8:18 and say these people did not really have any good thing. This is problematic. A good translation of that verse is “what he thinks he has will be taken away” (ESV). The Jews thought they had the kingdom and that God would not take it from them. They were wrong.
12. John Gill, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments in The Baptist Commentary Series, (Paris, AR: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1989), 7:144.
13. Matt 13:22, YLT.