A Picture Is Worth… Matthew 13:23

Matthew 13:23 “But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop , yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

I love IKEA! I like getting their furniture and opening up the box and beginning to read the instructions, or should I say, look at the pictures in the instructions. They have mastered the art of communicating a step by step process using only pictures. And if you follow the pictures carefully, you end up with an assembled product.

But you have to be willing to follow the steps they outline. If you try to do it without looking at the pictures, frustration will inevitably arrive at your doorstep. You will probably have pieces left over and your product won’t work quite the way it was designed to work.

In our chapter today Jesus uses this series of stories that tie together earthly pictures with heavenly truth. He gives us the picture, the parable, and then he tells us how the picture illustrates an eternal truth. And just about anyone can understand the eternal truth if they are open to hearing it.

Jesus uses grain seed, weeds, mustard seed, treasure hidden in a field, fine pearls and fish to bring His point home to the people with whom He was speaking. These things in and of themselves don’t really tell us anything about Jesus’ Kingdom, but each is paired up with a spiritual truth, a heavenly nugget, so that the disciples and the people have the opportunity to get a better glimpse of how the Kingdom works.

Our text is part of a parable told about four kinds of soils onto which the same seed is sown. The seed sown on packed soil gets eaten by the birds. The seed that lands on rocky spots sprout but die quickly, unable to gather enough moisture to survive. The seed that falls among weeds, grows, but it never produces any grain because the weeds steal all the moisture, nutrients and sunlight.

The final seed lands on good soil. This good soil represents people who hear the message and let it sink in to the point that understanding of the message happens. When someone truly understands the message of the Gospel, then their life is changed and as a result they become fruitful for the Kingdom. Good fruit inevitably produces good seed which multiplies.

When we allow the Gospel to penetrate and do its work, we become people who have plenty to share with others. We show the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, and this attracts others to find out for themselves just what the Gospel is all about. When they understand it, they change and the cycle repeats itself.

I am wondering just how deep we are willing to allow our understanding to go. And then I wonder if we are willing to let the multiplication process work through our lives, or whether we will keep the fruit of the Gospel to ourselves.