Genesis 19:12-29 and Matthew 13:1-17 (NIV)

Genesis 19:12-29

12  The two men said to Lot, “Do you have anyone else here—sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here,
13  because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the LORD against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.”
14  So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry his daughters. He said, “Hurry and get out of this place, because the LORD is about to destroy the city!” But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.
15  With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.”
16  When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the LORD was merciful to them.
17  As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!”
18  But Lot said to them, “No, my lords, please!
19  Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die.
20  Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it—it is very small, isn’t it? Then my life will be spared.”
21  He said to him, “Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of.
22  But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.” (That is why the town was called Zoar.)
23  By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land.
24  Then the LORD rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the LORD out of the heavens.
25  Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land.
26  But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.
27  Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the LORD.
28  He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.
29  So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.

Matthew 13:1-17
1   That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake.
2    Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore.
3    Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. 
4    As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 
5    Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 
6    But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 
7    Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 
8    Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 
9    Whoever has ears, let them hear.”
10  The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”
11  He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 
12  Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 
13  This is why I speak to them in parables:  “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
14  In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:  “‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
15  For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.  Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’
16  But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. 
17  For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.