Matthew 13:1-9
The King scatters the word, but only good-soil hearers receive it fruitfully.
1 On that day Jesus went out of the house, and sat by the seaside.
2 Great multitudes gathered to him, so that he entered into a boat, and sat, and all the multitude stood on the beach.
3 He spoke to them many things in parables, saying, “Behold, a farmer went out to sow.
4 As he sowed, some seeds fell by the roadside, and the birds came and devoured them.
5 Others fell on rocky ground, where they didn’t have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of earth.
6 When the sun had risen, they were scorched. Because they had no root, they withered away.
7 Others fell among thorns. The thorns grew up and choked them.
8 Others fell on good soil, and yielded fruit: some one hundred times as much, some sixty, and some thirty.
9 He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
The King scatters the word, but only good-soil hearers receive it fruitfully.
Matthew records Jesus beginning the parables discourse with the parable of the sower, calling hearers to recognize differing responses to the word of the kingdom and to hear with true spiritual receptivity.
Jesus teaches beside the lake, sitting in a boat because of the large crowd gathered on the shore.
The Kingdom in Parables: Hearing, Hiddenness, Growth, Worth, and Judgment
The kingdom of heaven is revealed through the word, received by fruitful hearers, hidden from hardened hearts, growing amid opposition, worth everything, and moving toward final judgment under the authority of the Son of Man.