Who is the Treasure? – Parables of Deliverance

Biblical Text: Matthew 13:44-52
Full Sermon Text

This sermon attempts to tie together the study of the parables in Matthew 13. The parable of the sower (two weeks ago) serves as the key to understanding. It brings up the problem – the kingdom of Heaven meets opposition – and answers why – our great enemies of the devil, the world and our flesh. The middle three parables (last week) point out what the Kingdom of Heaven will look like from Jesus to the end of the age as it engages those three. Compared to our expectations, this is often troublesome as the wheat and weeds forms the paradigm. The trouble is not wished away but we struggle against it. These things might look insurmountable. But that is the where the final three parables, today’s text enter. A man finds a treasure and sells all he has so that he might have it. That man is the Son of Man, Jesus, and the treasure is His peculiar treasure – you. Christ has defeated our great enemies and will surely deliver us.

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Babels and Beasts

Biblical Text: Matthew 13:24-43
Full Sermon Draft

We continue this week with the parables in Matthew 13. The parable of the sower with its focus on individuals soils is more applicable on a personal level. The parable of the weeds and with it the parable of the leaven care less about individual reception of the gospel but are aimed more toward the various situations that the people of God might find themselves. The leaven is hid in the midst of a very large amount of flour. The wheat and the weeds grow together. The people of God find themselves in a wide variety of fields in the world.

The title points toward Peter Leithart’s taxonomy of the kingdoms of this world: guardians, babels and beasts. The sermon attempts two things: 1) a warning to the people of God used to a guardian what it means to live in babel and 2) a refocus on the core hope – the resurrection – that unites the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom might look small and weak, but that is how God has chosen to act, and the reign of heaven even small instills hope.

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The Sower – Explanation and Moral

Biblical Text: Matthew 13:1-23
Full Sermon Draft

The parable of the sower is one of those pieces of the biblical story that live apart from its context, but compared to something like The Good Samaritan which carries its meaning as a stand alone set piece, the context of the sower is important. Ripped out of the real life of a real Jesus, likewise ripped out of the real life of the real church, the sower leads us to the hidden god. It is only as a parable that explains the fact of the real Kingdom of God which is present in Jesus Christ and his body the church that the sower yields the gospel. The sower functions first as an explanation of why the Kingdom seems so often to be defeated. God has chosen in this age to work like seed through the Word, and the word requires ears.

But in with that primary thrust of explanation there are a couple of moral lessons worth pondering: fruitfulness vs. unfruitfulness and the things that lead to unfruitfulness, and recognition of differentiation of fruitfulness.

The sermon ends with a look at the implied eschatological meaning, all growing seasons end in a harvest.

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