Matthew 13 - Kingdom of Heaven

Jesus Christ taught the crowds about the parables of the kingdom of heaven, when the disciples asked Him why, it is because they have harden their hearts to the truth & did not want to believe. They have set their heart to a certain point that no matter what kind of proof is presented before them, they will always find a way to defend their stance or to just reject the truth. So Jesus Christ said

Matthew 13 14 With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says: ‘You will indeed listen but never understand, and you will indeed look but never perceive.  15For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes, so that they might not look with their eyes, and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn— and I would heal them.’

Then He began to explain more in detail or examples with other parables such as sowing, weeds among wheat, mustard seed, yeast. Some patterns can be drawn out of the parables which is growth, valuable & separation of the good & evil.

The kingdom of heaven :

• grow & become life giving
• it is valuable like treasure or fine pearls
• the bad ones or evil ones will be separated by the angels from the righteous

Jesus Christ was able to heal the sick, cast out demons & spoke with wisdom, truth & authority but even so He was rejected by His own family in His hometown. As a prophet, a speaker that speaks God’s words is often rejected in their hometown because of their unbelief. Some may view it as because they’ve seen who He is & know all His characters or the lack of respect due to familiarity or even take for granted, but my view is that Jesus Christ grew up with them and it’s not just a few years but decades, so even after decades of living in such close proximity with Jesus, the Messiah, seeing that when He was different & when His ministry began to grow & prosper, they were offended by Him, YET, still do not believe, then…what else can be done or said to make them believe? One can read the pain & exasperation from John 5:43-47…

It is a reminder that we ought to examine our hearts & to ask God to help us in our unbelief, to surrender to Him & let Him help us to treasure His words & teachings, to never give up on to be righteous like Jesus Christ & continue to rely on Him to be faithful to God.