After the Parable of the Sower and Jesus’ explanation to His disciples, a natural question came up. If Jesus is sowing good seed and it is a matter of the soil of our hearts taking in God’s Word and the proclamation of the Kingdom, then how do we make sense of all the “bad seed” sown around us? The world doesn’t look like a lot of good. In fact, it can often be more of a challenge to see the good through the difficult, unjust, and wickedness of the world.
Jesus answered with a series of three parables: The Parables of the Weeds, Mustard Seed, and Leaven. Each one shows us something unique about the Kingdom of God. Each one tells us something we have to know about how God works and how God is at work, both at the time of Christ, and in our lives and world here and now.

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After some heavy sections through the Sermon on the Mount, seeing the ministry of Jesus reflecting the Kingdom of God, and the confrontations between Jesus and the Pharisees, we get to settle into some parables. Parables are stories that reflect and express deeper themes using vivid imagery, metaphors, and simile. Parables were one of the primary styles of teaching from Jesus. On Sunday we will look at Matthew 13:1-23, “The Parable of the Sower.” This parable happens to also include an explanation from Jesus to His disciples. We will see the different ways that our hearts might respond to the gospel and to God’s Word.

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When we left off, the Pharisees confronted Jesus and claimed that his work in casting out demons was actually the work of Satan. Jesus put them in their place. The next angle comes this Sunday. In what seems to be the same conversation and moment, the Pharisees challenged Jesus to give them a sign, a miracle that they would deem to be sufficient to prove his credentials as being sent by God. His answer shows us that there is no one like Jesus. We can’t stay neutral on him. His claims are either true and glorious, or crazy and blasphemous.

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In the letter of First John, we get a clear picture of what the world is really like. As the early church wrestled to understand the Christian life, John wanted them to be reassured of their secure relationship with God in spite of a chaotic world. Feel free to look ahead. We will be covering 1 John 2:3-17.

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What difference does it make to know God is there? For sure, in the midst of trials, it's very reassuring to know He is there to help us in our time of need. But, what about other times? What difference does it make to know God is there in the everyday stuff of life? He's there just as much in the washing of dishes, the folding of clothes, the shoveling of snow, and in the standing in line at the checkout stand. Our focus on Sunday was on walking with God.

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This week we get to the heart of one of the most difficult questions for each one of our souls – can we truly be forgiven? The heart of the gospel is God’s pursuit of us, His people, and the work Christ did on the cross – in our place, for our sin. Yet, in Matthew 12:21-27, Jesus called out the religious leaders, the Pharisees, for blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, for which there is no forgiveness. What does that mean?!?! How do we know if we have committed the unforgivable sin? What promises of God can we look to that will give us hope? We will work to dig into all of those questions and see that there is real hope for forgiveness and life.

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The end of Matthew 11 gives us the beautiful invitation from Jesus that we can come to him to find rest for our souls. As we turn to Matthew 12:1-21, we also continue with the theme of rest because our author turns our attention to a series of moments that happened on the Sabbath. Sabbath laws developed over time, and what Jesus encountered was well beyond anything found in God’s Law, but the thoughts of Rabbis in the Halakah, interpreting and expanding what it meant to observe the Sabbath properly. Those interpretations had cultivated a rigid posture to what Sabbath was all about.

Jesus challenged those interpretations, though. In fact, he claimed to be “The Lord of the Sabbath” himself. On Sunday we will take time to see the history of Sabbath in the Old Testament, in Judaism, and throughout church history. We will see what true rest is offered to us by Jesus, and how that compares and contrasts with the concept of Sabbath and seek to understand more clearly what it is that God’s people are called to.

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Flowing right out of the same context of John the Baptist asking Jesus if he really was the one he had waited and hoped for, Jesus continued teaching. The last two verses of Matthew 11 are one of the anchor points that I look to in what Jesus invites us into if we follow him. This Sunday is for all who feel weary and weighed down by life, sin, wickedness, and darkness both in our world and in our own hearts.

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