An encouraging word from Matthew 13
Biblical Israel Ministries & Tours (BIMT) is all about teaching the Bible in the context of the land of Israel and other biblical countries (Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and Italy). We teach the historical geography of the Bible as well as archaeology, customs and culture of the land. We aim to make connections between the Bible and the land in all that we do.
This is another session in the new series of teaching videos called “Devotions from Israel.” This brief five-minute devotional comes from Matthew 13. This narrative from the Bible takes us to somewhere along the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee.
About the Devotional
Often times, Jesus taught to masses of people. As an itinerate teaching rabbi, Jesus would have attracted many people who were interested in what He had to say. The crowds were particularly interested in what Jesus had to say about the
malchut shamyim, the “kingdom of heaven.”
Unlike other first century messianic figures, Jesus came to establish a spiritual kingdom, not a political one aimed to overthrow the Roman authorities. Jesus’ purpose was solely concerned about people coming under the authority of God’s “reign and rule,” a rabbinic perspective of what the kingdom of God (or heaven) implied.
The text of Matthew 13 opens up with “
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables...” (
Mt. 13:1-3). Jesus regularly taught in parables. We have 30 parables recorded in the Gospels. The use of the “parable” (called
mashal in Hebrew) was a genre of teaching used by all the rabbis.
