The Case of the Lavish Farmer (Matthew 13:3-23)

09/29/18 • -1 min

We shall turn again this morning to the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. Here we are looking together at the Sermon on the Sea which our Lord preached from a boat on the Sea of Galilee. A great crowd was assembled on the beach listening to him as he delivered seven parables which he called the secrets, or mysteries, of the kingdom of heaven. These seven parables constitute a view of the age following our Lord's appearance on earth, the present age in which we live.

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The Case of the Mysterious Harvest (Matthew 13:24-43)

We are returning this morning to Matthew 13 where we are looking at of parables our Lord gave to describe the age in which we live, the age introduced by his first coming and which has been unfolding now for almost twenty centuries. He looked down those twenty centuries and gave us in parable form some clues to the understanding of our own age. It is very important that we see what these are. We come today to the second in this series of parables. We looked last week at the parable of the sower. Now we come to what is called the parable of the wheat and the tares, or as we have it in our Revised Standard Version, the wheat and the weeds. This is part of the series which our Lord gave all on one day as he sat in a boat on the Sea of Galilee and instructed the crowds gathered on the shore.

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The Mystery of History (Matthew 13:1-17)

We have completed our studies in the book of Acts. We left Paul a prisoner in Rome, dwelling in his own hired house. He was awaiting trial before the emperor, but was free to have his friends visit him and to write letters to all parts of the empire. That is as far as Luke's inspired account goes. That is as much as we know from Acts of what happened to the early Christians. The book of Acts closes about A. D. 62. We know from suggestions in Paul's later letters that he very likely was freed and traveled about again during the time when Nero was emperor and Christianity was rapidly spreading throughout the Roman Empire as it brought new hope and new light to a pagan world which had lost its hope and light.