Who doesn't love some fresh bread? Jesus is the bread of life, right? Ya know, not the kale of life. Anyway, this one little verse packs a punch of a parable. A lot of the time the leaven is referred to as an influence that would be negative. Jesus is changing the analogy though. Read: Matthew 13:33 Notes: Leaven is yeastSometimes leaven[...]

Don't start listening to some people who argue about seed sizes. That's truly not the point of this parable. Focus on the whole picture. Again Jesus is using agricultural terminology so that the people would have the ability to grasp what he's talking about. It's a simple analogy but an affective one. Read: Matthew 13:31-32 Notes: Smalle[...]

Wheat is a prominent crop throughout scripture. Nehemiah's family worked in the wheat field. Boaz and Ruth found each other in the wheat. The major and minor prophets discuss wheat. So Jesus wasn't going to not use it as a lesson. He's again using what the people around him would know so that they could understand his message. Read: Matthew 13:[...]

The amount of times that Jesus uses gardening and agriculture for teaching purposes does make me nerd out a little. But the truth is that this is what the people he was teaching would understand. He spoke their language. Farmers, fisherman, and a culture that wasn't using a grocery store. They could relate to his stories because Jesus spoke to them li[...]

Today's parable is squished into a larger story so I'd actually encourage you to read the whole section Matthew 12:22-32. Jesus heals a man that's not only blind and mute, but also demon-oppressed. The Pharisees are trying to speak out against Jesus so they claim he's from Beelzebul. This name is translated as lord of the flies and flies were usually[...]

The context here is that Jesus is giving the disciples a warning. A warning of being aware of people that make look like them but are actually spreading false truth. Jesus gave them multiple warnings about false teachers. Multiple times he compares teachers to trees bearing fruit. Good fruit means good teachings. This fruit is not something that we sh[...]

Often a parable that is twisted because it's about judging. Judging is a topic that both believers and non-believers struggle with as you'll often hear things like "only God can judge me" or "who am I to judge?" This parable is more about hypocrisy than we like to think about. Why are we worried about someone else's sins, when we are still living in s[...]