Sometimes words just seem to jump up and demand to be heard. And here in chapter thirteen of Matthew, it happens. Words jump up and wave their arms, begging us to notice.

So let’s do that.

In chapter thirteen, Matthew lists some of the parables that Jesus told the crowds when he preached. And as he tells the stories, there are certain words that get repeated over and over again.

That’s what I mean about jumping up and demanding to be heard. They don’t actually jump. But they repeat themselves. And if words repeat, they might just be important.

If you look through the entire chapter, it will be easy to spot some of the repeated words. One phrase is the kingdom of heaven. When you get rolling through the shorter parables, you’ll hear the kingdom of heaven is like one thing or another. But the phrase shows up in this first parable, the story of the farmer who plants seed.

Another phrase is he who has ears, let him hear, or if you have ears, use them, or even better, we could just say the same thing using two words—Listen Up!

When you hear those words, think of a challenge. The parables come across almost like a puzzle. People have to think about them, or else the point will just be lost in the language.

I don’t think the stories are all that difficult, but there is a question about why Jesus doesn’t just come out and say what he means. Why all this do-you-have-ears language?

Jesus tells the disciples that they should have seen this parable thing coming. The prophets knew that he would speak in parables, and they explained why.

Jesus points back to the book of Isaiah. The prophet Isaiah had a very tough ministry. People didn’t listen to him very well. He probably took it personally, but the real problem was that they weren’t listening to God. The people didn’t really want to hear what God had to say.

So he spoke in riddles, because the people had grown tired of listening. Their ears were plugged. Their eyes were shut. Their hearts were scarred.

Don’t think they didn’t have a chance. They had already heard the message of God and had turned their backs. They had closed their mind to the gospel in Isaiah’s day, and apparently people were doing the same thing in Jesus’ day.

You might hear someone say that Jesus used parables because stories are such an effective teaching method. But Matthew says just the opposite. The people weren’t listening, so they got puzzles and stories. If they wanted to hear, fine. It was up to them.

Let’s leave the parable of the dude who plants seed in all the different soils. That is a great section of scripture to read for yourself, but Jeff has done a great job of laying out the parable and the interpretation in his study of the passage.

So move on to verse twenty-four. And we see the phrase, the kingdom of heaven is like …

Already we should be thinking that we are going to find out how God works on earth. That’s the kingdom. It is God’s kingdom at work around us. So if God is working on this planet to save people and call them to himself, this is how it will go down.

Knowing that, you can immediately set aside the story itself. I don’t mean that you can ignore it. But the story is only there to tell a spiritual truth. So I won’t get all tangled up in the details of the story.

In other words, if Jesus tells me about a man planting seed, I won’t go stand out in a field and look around. If Jesus mentions a pearl, I won’t run to the jewelry store. Because the field isn’t important, and neither is the pearl.

Tell me what the pearl stands for. That’s the important thing. This is a puzzle, and I want the solution.

So back to verse twenty-four. The story tells about a guy who plants good seed. The guy is Jesus. Let’s just start with that. And what does he plant? We’ll see that these are people that God calls to himself.

The good things that grow up because of God’s effort are people. But not just any people. These are Christians, those who believe in Jesus and follow him. They are the good stuff.

But someone else is planting bad stuff—or bad people. It isn’t much of a secret. Everyone notices the weeds, and they even ask if they should go about weeding the field.

Most farmers would do that, I would imagine. They would get the weeds out.

But this isn’t about farming, which brings us back to something that was said earlier. Most of the parables are different. The kingdom doesn’t always work the way we would expect. It isn’t a farm. It isn’t a field. It is the kingdom of heaven.

In the kingdom of heaven, the weeds don’t get pulled up until the harvest.

And that’s the point of the parable.

Someone told me, long ago, that no one can tell which is which. The weeds look very much like the wheat. I always thought that was the point of the parable, and it might be true.

Maybe you can tell a weed from corn or beans or tomato plants, but you can’t always see into a person’s heart. So in the kingdom of heaven, there may be good reason to wait for the last minute.

Or it may be that God is worried that the heavy boots of the servants would tromp on a tender plant, or that the sweep of the hoe would uproot a perfectly good strand of wheat.

Judgment tends to catch the good and the bad in the same catastrophe. Maybe God doesn’t want that. He is holding back his hand for the sake of the good plants, the sincere Christians who would be harmed by the same events that would punish the wicked.

Either way, if you live in the kingdom, you will grow up in a world choked with weeds. Judgment will come, but it will wait.

That’s the meaning.

Let’s do the next two.

The kingdom is like a plant that starts as a small seed and grows into a big, big tree. And at the same time, the kingdom is like yeast that starts small but seeps into every nook and cranny of the dough. You don’t see it, but there it is, everywhere, like a ninja.

What’s the meaning? The kingdom is movin’, baby! It’s goin’ places! It don’t look like much, at the start, but it can’t be stopped. It’s like some sort of ninja yeast, or like a big tree that just takes over the whole yard.

That’s the meaning.

Don’t go planting a mustard tree in your yard. That’s just the story. But Jesus isn’t talking about mustard, or even ketchup for that matter.

It’s the kingdom, baby!

Two more.

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure, or like a giant pearl. In each story, the reward is so tremendous that the person sells everything just to have the riches that are waiting for them.

And what is the most valuable thing?

The kingdom. Don’t think that God has promised you a big pearl. That’s the story, but the meaning is the kingdom of heaven. If you have the kingdom, you have riches. If you don’t have it, give up everything else to get the kingdom.

Be careful. It doesn’t say to give up all your money.

That’s the story, but these are parables. The meaning is different. Heaven is not yeast. It is like yeast in one particular way. Heaven isn’t a big pearl. It is similar to finding a pearl, but it isn’t the same thing.

So you can ask what it is that a person might have to give up to get the kingdom. In the story, they couldn’t get the treasure until they sold all the other similar items in their garage. So what has to go out of my life?

Pride, maybe. All the other things I trusted instead of God. Self-sufficiency. My independence from God.

What could take the place of all that? What could render my pride useless? What could make my self-sufficiency insignificant? Can you imagine the one thing that comes along in your life that makes everything else unimportant by comparison?

That’s the kingdom.

Try the next one on your own, chapter thirteen, verses forty-seven through fifty-two. It’s the story of a net that brings up a catch of fish. It’s a very simple story, and like most parables, it has a very simple point.

I want to mention just one thing from the parable, in verse fifty-two. Jesus says that every teacher of the law that has been instructed in the kingdom will bring out treasures, some old and some new. 

The kingdom is new. Jesus was opening up something fantastically new. We don’t notice, because we’ve heard about the kingdom for years. We know what Jesus did on the cross.

But the teachers of the law had to change. They had to get hold of this new thing. They still had something to bring to the table. They knew the law, and the law had something to teach us. It still does.

So the teachers of the law weren’t totally useless. They just needed the new piece to the puzzle. Jesus is the truth that makes sense of all the law, all the Old Testament, all the history of humanity from the beginning until now.

When you have that piece of the puzzle, you can reach back into the Old testament and bring out some fantastic truth, and you can reach forward into the life of Christ and put everything in perspective so that it makes sense.

Old treasures and new.

One more thing, and this is a little different. No more talk about repeated phrases or such. Just a comparison of two stories.

Look in chapter fourteen. Matthew tells us about the death of John the Baptist. It is a sad, wasteful story. Given a choice of any prize, the step-daughter of Herod asks for the head of John the Baptist. Literally. She wanted him killed.

And Herod does what she asked, even though he knew it was wrong. But he gave in to this young girl, who makes a most frivolous and cruel wish in the midst of a crowd of guests at a party.

Contrast that with Jesus, who has gone away into the wilderness to be alone. The crowds follow, and they spoil his chance for solitude. Faced with exactly what he didn’t want, he reacts. He reveals what he is really like, deep down inside.

He healed them.

Because he cared.

In Herod’s palace, they partied and they feasted and they killed, because they didn’t care.

In the wilderness, Jesus healed the sick and multiplied bread and fish so that everyone could eat, because he cared.

When you think about it, he’s like something really valuable, like a treasure, only it’s hidden in a field. He’s like a really big pearl that is so valuable—

Stop me if you’ve heard this story.