Fresh Studies in Matthew, Matthew 13

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It might be that the parable of the sower is a picture of what he teaches them from Isaiah.  Some will not hear in Israel.  Some will follow and be receptive for a while but not truly internalize the whole of the gospel, and some will be seduced by the cares of the world and persecution.  But many will stay with him, and grow.  The first church was mostly Jewish; we forget hat, but the leaders of Judaism were against it.  Eventually the Gentiles outnumbered them, and then over they decades some anti-semitic elements came in.  I think it was mostly Constantine and the growth of Catholicism in terms of a state church.  One of the reasons we don’t celebrate Easter on Passover (as we should) is that Constantine didn’t want the Christian holy day to be conflated with the Jewish one.  (I’m sure there are books on this.)
The passage in Isaiah and its use here is a problem passage to me, in our modern sense of the ideal pure democracy of the gospel.  Does everyone have equal access to the gospel and equal ability to respond?  The Bible seems to contradict itself on this.  We don’t get access to the knowledge of who is able to accept, but all are invited.

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