We have seen what the purpose of the parables is and what period they cover. We have also seen that parables are not meant to explain something, but that they are meant to hide things. There is a deeper meaning in the story, it is the depiction of something else.
Immediately in the first parable it becomes clear that not only the words of the Lord are symbolic, but that his actions are also symbolic.
Matthew 13
1 That day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea.
demonstrative
The Lord’s action is visual teaching. This becomes clear later, because when the Lord explains why He speaks in parables, He not only says that it is so that ‘hearing they may not hear, nor understand’, but also so that seeing they may not see, that is: not perceive (Matt. 13:13-14). They saw the Lord go out, out of the house and sit by the sea. But they did not really see it, they did not understand why Jesus did this and what its meaning was.
out, out of the house
The reaction to the unbelief of the leaders of the Jewish people is that the Lord turns away from them. The house is a representation of the house of Israel (e.g. Ex. 16:31; Isa. 5:7).
In Scripture, the sea is a type of the nations: the sea of peoples (Ps. 2:1; Rev. 17:15). The Lord illustrates here by His action that the Kingdom would be taken away from Israel and given to another people (Matt. 21:43; Rom. 10:19), who are gathered from the nations (Acts 15:14). At the moment that He does this, He also begins to speak in secrets. The Kingdom would not be made public and would be hidden from Israel. Only to believers does the Lord make these things known.
which sea?
There is something special about the sea, because the sea where this took place is the Sea of Galilee. This sea, or lake, has several names. For example, it is also called the Lake of Tiberias and the Sea of Gennesaret. The latter is the Greek name for the Hebrew kinneret Num.34:11; Jos.13:27), which is derived from kinor = harp. Gennesaret is the lake of the harp. It also has the shape of a harp, as you can see in the image below.
Psalm 49 (HSV)
5 I will reveal my secrets by (the) harp playing.
The Revised Statenvertaling has made it harpplaying here, but playingis in italics and has been added. When the Tenach predicts that God would reveal secrets by the harp, this is a hidden reference to the Lord speaking in the secrets of the Kingdom, which He began at the Sea of Gennesaret.
2 And great multitudes were gathered unto him, so that he entered into a ship to sit; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.
from the sea to the land
Jesus steps into a ship and speaks to the crowd from there. He speaks from the sea to the land. This is also symbolic of the time in which Israel stands aside. The word of God now comes via the nations (> the sea) to the land (> Israel).
An example of this is Paul, who calls himself an apostle of the nations several times (Rom. 11:13; 1 Tim. 2:7; 2 Tim. 1:11). This means that he is a representative of the nations, in other words a pagan apostle. Paul spoke to Israel as a pagan.
We know that Paul was an Israelite, from the tribe of Benjamin (Rom. 11:1). But Paul was also a Roman and appealed to the emperor (Acts 25:11).
The Hebrew Tanakh, our ‘old testament’, is written in Hebrew, but the ‘new testament’ in Greek. This too is a fulfillment of how God would speak to the Jewish people through “ridiculous lips and other tongues” (Isa. 28:11; 1 Cor. 14:21).
