The same day as the "Beelzebub" incident, Jesus went to the lake and sat there alone.
Large crowds soon started forming around him. He taught the crowds, but soon the crowd got so big that got into a boat and taught the crowd on shore. Speaking across water is a natural way to amplify one's voice.
It sounds like Jesus spent a lot of time with these crowds at this time, but the Bible only records one message. Perhaps he said this message repeatedly. Perhaps he discussed the events that happened earlier that day.
He tells a parable about a farmer. The farmer takes his crop seed and scatters it onto various soil conditions:
- along the path, where it is eaten by birds,
- on rocky shallow soil, where it grows quickly, but is scorched by the sun
- among thorny plants, which choke the plant that farmer has sown
- on good soil, where it produced a crop of 30, 60, or 100 times
This is a farming parable told to parables. On a literal level, this is completely common sense, even among people who have no background in farming. Everyone knows that seeds need good soil to produce plants.
The crowd leaves and Jesus is alone. I imagine there were probably a lot of disappointed farmers in the crowd who came to hear something more meaningful from this guy Jesus than an obvious teaching about farming.
A handful of people stick around and ask Jesus what did he mean by this. Jesus responds that to them, they have been given the secret of the Kingdom of God and that he talks in parables so people will not understand.
Jesus then explains what the parable meant. The farmer sows the word of God. The various soil conditions are the people's response to it. The bird represents Satan, who snatches the word before it can even grow a root. The sun represents hardships in life that kill the seedling faith. The thorns are the various distractions in this life that choke away the crop. Finally, the good soil can exponentially multiply the crop of the original seed.
Putting it all together, the farmer has sown the seed and the people asking Jesus have been given the "secret" and later are given the interpretation, this means that the "secret" is to ask Jesus for the interpretation. The classic interpretation of the parable is that the "secret" is no secret at all, at least not anymore, but rather a relationship with Jesus is the secret of the Kingdom of God.
So, based on that, we can look back at the story. Jesus was the farmer sowing the seed, i.e. speaking from the boat. He spoke to the crowd, which had various soil conditions. The seed was immediately snatched by Satan and people were disappointed by the obvious message and left in disappointment. Other seeds may have been choked as people were distracted by their own life and did not stick around to ask Jesus what this meant. Still, the seed found good soil and people stuck around to ask Jesus what it meant.
One last thing about the farmer, the farmer spreads the seed to every soil, good or bad. The farmer full well knows what will happen to the seed on the bad soil, but the farmer spreads it anyway.
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