Ears to Hear

The crowd by the Sea of Galilee grew so large that Jesus taught from a boat (13:2). You met this parable in Mark 4 a few weeks ago; this time, look closely at the two soils that almost work. The stony-ground hearer receives the word “with joy” (13:20). The problem is not a lack of enthusiasm but a lack of root, so when tribulation comes, the plant withers. The thorny-ground hearer never rejects the word at all; “the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches” simply choke it until it “becometh unfruitful” (13:22). And even good ground varies: some bears a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty (13:23). The Lord counts all three as fruit.

🔗 Cross-references

• Alma 32:37–41 ↗Alma describes nourishing the word until it takes root and becomes a tree springing up unto everlasting life.
• Mosiah 2:9 ↗King Benjamin asks his people to open their ears to hear and their hearts to understand before he teaches them.
• Alma 12:10–11 ↗Alma explains that a hardened heart receives less of the word, while a softened heart is given more.

A tare was a weed that looks almost exactly like wheat until both are fully grown. When the servants discover tares in the field, they want to pull them up at once, but the householder says to wait, “lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them” (13:29). Jesus explains that the field is the world and the reapers are angels (13:38–39). In a revelation given in December 1832, the Lord applied this parable to the latter days: the angels are eager to reap, but He holds them back “while the blade is yet tender” (Doctrine and Covenants 86:6). The same chapter holds two small parables about growth: a mustard seed that becomes a tree, and a little leaven that works through the whole loaf (13:31–33).

🔗 Cross-references

• Doctrine and Covenants 86:1–7 ↗The Lord’s latter-day explanation of the wheat and the tares, including gathering the wheat first.
• Doctrine and Covenants 64:33 ↗“Out of small things proceedeth that which is great,” the same truth as the mustard seed.
• Alma 37:6 ↗Alma teaches his son that great things are brought to pass by small and simple things.

Two short parables make the same point from opposite directions. One man stumbles onto treasure hidden in a field and, “for joy thereof,” sells everything to buy the field (13:44). A merchant has spent his life seeking fine pearls, and when he finds one of great price, he too sells all he has (13:45–46). Some find the gospel by surprise; others after long searching. Either way, the kingdom is worth everything, and giving for it feels like gain, not loss. Then comes the net that gathers every kind of fish (13:47–50) and a scribe who brings out treasures “new and old” (13:52). The chapter ends with a hard contrast: in Nazareth, His own neighbors ask, “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” and He does few mighty works there “because of their unbelief” (13:55, 58).

🔗 Cross-references

• Philippians 3:7–8 ↗Paul counts everything he gave up as loss compared with knowing Christ.
• Mark 6:1–6 ↗Mark’s account of the rejection at Nazareth, where Jesus marvels at their unbelief.

Luke opens this chapter with a detail the other Gospels mostly leave out: women traveled with Jesus and the Twelve, including Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Susanna, and they supported Him “of their substance” (8:1–3). Luke then retells the sower and adds that good ground is “an honest and good heart” that keeps the word and brings forth fruit “with patience” (8:15). Right after the parable comes a warning: “Take heed therefore how ye hear” (8:18). When His mother and brothers come looking for Him, He says His family includes those who “hear the word of God, and do it” (8:21). The chapter then moves onto the water, where a storm fills the boat while He sleeps. He calms it with a word and asks the frightened disciples, “Where is your faith?” (8:25).

🔗 Cross-references

• Mark 4:35–41 ↗Mark’s account of the storm, including the Savior’s words “Peace, be still.”
• Alma 32:41–43 ↗Alma, like Luke, ties the growth of the word to diligence and patience.

You read Mark’s version of these rescues two weeks ago. Luke, whom Paul calls “the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14), adds details worth slowing down for. After the man called Legion is healed, the townspeople are not relieved but afraid, and ask Jesus to leave (8:37). Luke admits the woman “had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any” (8:43). When Jesus asks, “Who touched me?” Peter protests that the whole crowd is pressing on Him, but Jesus knows the difference between being jostled and being reached for (8:45–46). The woman comes trembling and declares her story “before all the people” (8:47), so her healing is public, not hidden. And at Jairus’s house, Luke says simply, “her spirit came again” (8:55).

🔗 Cross-references

• Mark 5:21–43 ↗Mark’s fuller account of Jairus’s daughter and the woman who touched His garment.
• 3 Nephi 17:7 ↗The risen Lord invites the Nephites to bring every sick and afflicted person to Him to be healed.

Luke 13 opens with tragedy: Galileans killed by Pilate and eighteen people crushed by a falling tower in Siloam. Jesus rejects the idea that they were worse sinners (13:2–5). Then a fig tree has borne nothing for three years. The owner says to cut it down, but the dresser pleads, “Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it” (13:8). On a Sabbath, Jesus sees a woman bowed together for eighteen years and says, “Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity” (13:12). When the synagogue ruler objects, Jesus calls her “a daughter of Abraham” who deserves to be loosed on the Sabbath (13:16). The chapter ends with Him longing to gather Jerusalem as a hen gathers her brood (13:34).

🔗 Cross-references

• Jacob 5:41 ↗In Zenos’s allegory the Lord of the vineyard weeps and asks what more He could have done for His vineyard.
• 3 Nephi 10:4–6 ↗The Lord speaks to the Nephites of gathering His people as a hen gathers her chickens.
• John 9:1–3 ↗Jesus again rejects the idea that suffering is always a punishment for sin.

Today, return to the key passage. The disciples ask why Jesus teaches in parables, and His answer turns on hearing (13:10–13). He quotes Isaiah about a people whose hearts had “waxed gross” and whose ears were “dull of hearing,” who closed their eyes lest they be converted and healed (13:15). Then He turns to His disciples: “Blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear” (13:16). Many prophets and righteous people, He says, longed to see and hear what they were seeing and hearing (13:17). The difference was not intelligence. The disciples stayed after the crowd left and asked. As you take the sacrament today, come with a question and listen for the answer in the hymns, the prayers and the talks.

🔗 Cross-references

• Isaiah 6:9–10 ↗The original prophecy the Savior quotes about hearing without understanding.
• Luke 8:18 ↗Luke’s version of the same lesson: “Take heed therefore how ye hear.”
• 2 Nephi 28:30 ↗Those who hearken to the Lord’s counsel receive more, line upon line.