Most of us who go to church are familiar with the parables (symbolic stories) and why Jesus spoke using them instead of just revealing God's ways outright. He followed Isaiah the prophet when He taught the thousands of people being entertained by His teaching. Those who wanted to know God and find Him would try to figure it out and would meditate on it thinking of what they already knew of God in their own lives and applying that to what they just heard.
Let's apply that to the parable of the seed because the seed is the parable! LOL Matthew 13 and Isaiah 6 (use BibleGateway and choose New American Standard Version)
So those whose hearts and minds were distracted during the teaching were not even interested in hearing but maybe wanted to get out of the house or be with their friends. The parable was eaten by the birds as soon as it was told. The parable had no way to get into their hearts and minds because their minds were focused not on the teaching but on themselves and their friends.
Those who actually listened and whose hearts and minds are compared to the soil around rocks (how many plants grow in the dry stream beds of MO? River rocks, all round and the size of big potatoes that fill your hand.)...where was I, the little soil. Two examples, when the spring seeds grow in the cracks of the driveway but by summer's end are dead, or the little pine that my mother took home that was found growing on a patch of dirt on a single story high boulder in my back yard. If it had been left there it would have died in a couple more years.
These people listened and loved talking about the teachings on their way home have a little soil in their hearts. They smile at their neighbors who were home that day. However, that evening their friends stop by to talk about their day. They tell them they heard the word. During Jesus' day, or in Israel today, or in any Muslim nation their friends may have warned them not to listen to false prophets but to listen to the priests and teachers. If they followed Him any more they might get kicked out or not be able to offer the sacrifices and holy day gifts of thanksgiving. Today their friends laugh and scoff, "Yeah, I heard about that guy, He's a liar and just wants your money. I've known plenty of teachers who are the same way. Donate here! Bbbwwahahaha! Televangelists! Religious authors making you pay big bucks for their theology books." So these people want to keep their friends and not change their lives and so reject the teaching they heard with joy.
There are others who are not worried about what their friends say or leaving the establishment. They hear the word of truth and go for years living the good life. Then tragedy strikes. Their child gets sick or their house is lost in a hurricane or twister, or flood. They say, God doesn't love me or He can't heal my child. The others are those who are worried about their money. They don't have to give it away or ever ask forgiveness, they just want to make more money! What will they eat? What will they wear? They need the newest styles or sneakers. They no longer think about the good life. They no longer share the joy that they first had because it is now replaced with STRESS.
So what are the people with good soil for their seed like? My mother took the little pine from the boulder and planted it in soil in a county that had been farmed since the revolution (but is now all housing developments) and it is about 25 feet tall. It's a little crooked from the shade of the next tree (goofy mulberry) but it's doing well. Those seeded people who are doing well are not necessarily the missionaries who bring the word of God to hundreds, but are also those who shine the light into the darkness of their neighbors. Their joy is ongoing and a witness. They make others wonder about the source of their peace and joy. I also believe they share the Way, the Truth, and the Life with love and joy and peace, and sometimes in rebuke and warning.
If someone is heading around a curve on a trail that ends with a cliff, how do you tell them?
I started with Matt 13 but then went to Isaiah. Isaiah asked how long it would be until people's eyes were opened and they heard the truth and repented and were healed...the answer?
"Until cities are devastated and without inhabitant,
Houses are without people,
And the land is utterly desolate,
...
The holy seed is its stump."
This election, people are more worried about what they will eat and wear and where they will live than the lives of the innocent unborn. They don't realize that God blessed this land because people didn't worry about those things because when you live as a seed on fertile soil, God takes care to bring the elements together to provide for life.
The Biblical consequence for child sacrifice is invasion and conquest. No wall is going to stop the invasion. Only overturning Roe, outlawing pre-born genocide from conception, and bulldozing clinics (making hospital abortion surgical rooms into nurseries) will be acceptable. And of course trying to keep the grandkids from ever doing it again.
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