The Life of Jesus

A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you."

He replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?"

Looking at those seated in a circle around him, he said, "See! Here are my mother and my brothers!

Whoever does what God wants is my brother, sister and mother!"

Again Yeshua began to teach by the lake, but the crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat on the lake and sat there, while the crowd remained on shore at the water's edge.

He taught them many things in parables. In the course of his teaching, he said to them:

"Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed.

As he sowed, some seed fell alongside the path; and the birds came and ate it up.

Other seed fell on rocky patches where there was not much soil. It sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow;

but when the sun rose, the young plants were scorched; and since their roots were not deep, they dried up.

Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked it; so that it yielded no grain.

But other seed fell into rich soil and produced grain; it sprouted, and grew, and yielded a crop -- thirty, sixty, even a hundred times what was sown."

And he concluded, "Whoever has ears to hear with, let him hear!"

When Yeshua was alone, the people around him with the Twelve asked him about the parables.

He answered them, "To you the secret of the Kingdom of God has been given; but to those outside, everything is in parables,

so that they may be always looking but never seeing; always listening but never understanding. Otherwise, they might turn and be forgiven!"

Then Yeshua said to them, "Don't you understand this parable? How will you be able to understand any parable?

The sower sows the message.

Those alongside the path where the message is sown are people who no sooner hear it than the Adversary comes and takes away the message sown in them.

Likewise, those receiving seed on rocky patches are people who hear the message and joyfully accept it at once; but they have no root in themselves. So they hold out for a while, but as

soon as some trouble or persecution arises on account of the message, they immediately fall away.

Others are those sown among thorns -- they hear the message;

but the worries of the world, the deceitful glamor of wealth and all the other kinds of desires push in and choke the message; so that it produces nothing.

But those sown on rich soil hear the message, accept it and bear fruit -- thirty, sixty or a hundredfold."

He said to them, "A lamp isn't brought in to be put under a bowl or under the bed, is it? Wouldn't you put it on a lampstand?