spirituality

The final true parable Jesus tells in the Matthew 13 discourse is the Parable of the Net, which will be the focus of today’s study. As with all of these studies, if you don't have time to read through the whole thing, feel free to scroll down to the summary and conclusions at the bottom. … Continue reading The Parable of the Net

After explaining the Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat, Jesus ends his parables discourse with three rapid-fire parables. The third of these acts as a nice book-end to the discourse, so we’ll leave that for next time, but the other two will be our focus today. These are the Parables of the Hidden Treasure … Continue reading The Parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl

Jesus’ parables discourse in Matthew ‘s Gospel gets off to a rollicking start. Fist he tells the Parable of the Sower, with its public message of an exorbitantly generous God but private message about the variability in reception to his message. Then he tells the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, on the need … Continue reading The Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven

Last time, we looked at Jesus’ Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat. We saw how it offers a profound and surprising message of forbearance and lack of judgmentalism, insisting that it is better in God’s Kingdom to let a ‘bad seed’ thrive in the here and now than to risk uprooting one of the … Continue reading The Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat: Part 2, Jesus’ Interpretation

The last two posts we looked at both the Parable of the Sower and its interpretation. We saw that Jesus took advantage of the ability of stories to carry multiple meanings, telling a story that could mean one thing in public, but another for his inner circle. The next parable in Matthew 13 is another … Continue reading The Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat: Part 1, The Story