Tarrying and Teaching by the Seaside

151:4.1The next day Je­sus again taught the peo­ple from the boat, say­ing: “The king­dom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while he slept, his en­emy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and has­tened away. And so when the young blades sprang up and later were about to bring forth fruit, there ap­peared also the weeds. Then the ser­vants of this house­holder came and said to him: ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? Whence then come these weeds?’ And he replied to his ser­vants, ‘An en­emy has done this.’ The ser­vants then asked their mas­ter, ‘Would you have us go out and pluck up these weeds?’ But he an­swered them and said: ‘No, lest while you are gath­er­ing them up, you up­root the wheat also. Rather let them both grow to­gether un­til the time of the har­vest, when I will say to the reapers, Gather up first the weeds and bind them in bun­dles to burn and then gather up the wheat to be stored in my barn.’”

151:4.2Af­ter the peo­ple had asked a few ques­tions, Je­sus spoke an­other para­ble: “The king­dom of heaven is like a grain of mus­tard seed which a man sowed in his field. Now a mus­tard seed is the least of seeds, but when it is full grown, it be­comes the great­est of all herbs and is like a tree so that the birds of heaven are able to come and rest in the branches thereof.”

151:4.3“The king­dom of heaven is also like leaven which a woman took and hid in three mea­sures of meal, and in this way it came about that all of the meal was leav­ened.”

151:4.4“The king­dom of heaven is also like a trea­sure hid­den in a field, which a man dis­cov­ered. In his joy he went forth to sell all he had that he might have the money to buy the field.”

151:4.5“The king­dom of heaven is also like a mer­chant seek­ing goodly pearls; and hav­ing found one pearl of great price, he went out and sold ev­ery­thing he pos­sessed that he might be able to buy the ex­traor­di­nary pearl.”

151:4.6“Again, the king­dom of heaven is like a sweep net which was cast into the sea, and it gath­ered up ev­ery kind of fish. Now, when the net was filled, the fish­er­men drew it up on the beach, where they sat down and sorted out the fish, gath­er­ing the good into ves­sels while the bad they threw away.”

151:4.7Many other para­bles spoke Je­sus to the mul­ti­tudes. In fact, from this time for­ward he sel­dom taught the masses ex­cept by this means. Af­ter speak­ing to a pub­lic au­di­ence in para­bles, he would, dur­ing the evening classes, more fully and ex­plic­itly ex­pound his teach­ings to the apos­tles and the evan­ge­lists.