Matthew 13: The Harvest
Passage (NIV): Matthew 13
Preacher: Mark Kingston
Following Jesus · Matthew 13 · Week 1 · What is God longing for?
After a break of a few months, we're back in Matthew's gospel, starting at chapter 13. It sits right at the midpoint of Matthew’s whole gospel, and it's a big one!
Setting the scene
By this point, Jesus has been out in the villages proclaiming and demonstrating the kingdom of God - amazing words and powerful deeds. He’s been healing people, setting them free, and restoring dignity to those who'd lost it. But a question has started to hang in the air: who do you say Jesus is? The Pharisees have declared their hand: they say he's of the devil. But most people are still somewhere in the middle, not sure what to make of him.
In response, Jesus shifts gear. He stops teaching in straight lines and moves into parables. Parables filter people. They are stories that hide their goodness until you lean in and take a closer look. They float past those whose hearts are closed, but they draw in those who are hungry for more of God.
The Parable of the Sower
The parable at the centre of this chapter is the sower. A farmer scattering seed across four types of soil. The farmer doesn't change. The seed doesn't change. What changes is the soil. Four different soils, four different responses to God's word landing on us. We read the whole of Matthew 13 together on Sunday, all eight parables, because they're connected. Jesus is doing one thing across all of them, and if we have eyes to see it, the whole chapter opens up.
Today we're only looking at the good soil, and the harvest it produces (we’ll look at the rest in future weeks). In the ancient world, a thirtyfold return was considered a really good harvest. But sixty or a hundredfold was miracle territory! It was a harvest so far beyond normal agricultural returns that the only explanation was God. The only other place a hundredfold harvest appears in the whole Bible is Genesis 26:12, where Isaac sows in famine conditions and reaps a hundredfold. The text says simply that this happened because “the Lord blessed him”.
That kind of mega harvest is an only-God thing. And crucially, it feeds the village, not just the farmer. When the return is that abundant, there is more than enough to go around. That's the economy of God.
The story of a mega harvest
So what does that actually look like? Let me tell you about two women on the small Scottish island Lewis in 1949.
Peggy was 84 and completely blind. Her sister Christine was 82 and barely able to leave the house. No platform, no influence, and no one paying them much attention. The world had written them off. But they were hungry for the younger generations of their island to know Jesus, and that hunger drove them to pray. Tuesday and Friday nights, from 10pm to 3 or 4 in the morning, for over a year. Small, hidden, in the dark.
Out of that came one of the most documented moves of God in modern British history. A visiting preacher, Duncan Campbell, arrived on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. He led the service in Church which ended at 11pm. He walked outside and found crowds of people already gathered, uninvited, drawn from the pubs and dance halls, many of them already on their knees, begging for God’s mercy. They reopened the church. Eight hundred people crammed in. The service ran until 4am. Campbell left only to find even more people on their knees in fields, roadsides and gathered outside the local police station, crying out to God for forgiveness. The revival that began that night lasted two years and spread to neighbouring islands.
That is what a hundredfold harvest can look like. It started with two women the world had written off, praying in the dark with a hunger they refused to let go of.
So what?
Here's what struck me about Lewis. It was a small, rural community of around 23,000 people, cut off from the mainland by sea, where everyone knew everyone. The young people had largely drifted away from church, and most people had quietly accepted that as the new normal. The Sunshine Coast today has around 32,000 people. We're only reachable by ferry or floatplane. And I think we know something about young people drifting away from a church that is aging. The Isle of Lewis and here aren't so different!
So here's the question. Is there a burden growing in you for a person, a family, this town, this coast? That hunger, however small, is not an accident. It's evidence that the sower has already been at work in you. God hasn't given up on Gibsons. He's looking for soil - people like Peggy and Christine who have a burden to pray for God to move.
If something in this is stirring in you, don't sit on it. Start praying. And let me know…. I'd love to pray with you!
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(Next week: what gets in the way of that hunger? We look at the other three soils, and most of us will find ourselves somewhere in there…)
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Right now
Jesus says the harvest depends on the soil, not the farmer. So honestly, what's the soil of your heart like today? Not what you wish it was. What's it actually like?Something stirring?
Peggy and Christine had a hunger for the people around them, not just for their own spiritual lives, but for their whole island. Is there anyone or anything like that for you? A person, a family, a part of this community that you find yourself carrying? It might be barely a flicker. Name it anyway.Written yourself off?
Peggy was blind. Christine could barely leave the house. Neither of them looked like someone God could use. We all have a version of that story we tell ourselves about why it probably won't be us. What's yours?One small thing…
The revival on Lewis started hidden…two women, the middle of the night, no audience, no plan. Jesus says the kingdom starts like a mustard seed, like a pinch of yeast. It starts tiny. What's the smallest, most hidden thing you could do this week to act on whatever is stirring in you?Anyone else?
It was two women, not one. And then a minister who gathered other leaders. And then a preacher who almost didn't come. The whole thing grew - but it started with two people who found each other in the dark and prayed. That's it. That's where it began. Is there one person you could share any of this with, and pray with, however briefly and simply? Not a programme, not a commitment, just two people and an honest prayer. That might be exactly where this starts for us too.
