Matthew 13:24 – 58 --- PARABLE OF THE KINGDOM
ILLUSTRATION:
Story of Zig Zeagur:He was encouraging a friend to go to church but his friend did not want to because he said, the church is full of hypocrites. Zig Zeagur said, “Well, that is okay. There is room for one more!”
This collection of parables is very interesting. My pastor used to mention of his Bible teacher who used to say, “You should not teach the parables of the Kingdom, until you have been in the ministry for 30 years!” I think he said this because when you are in ministry for a while, you begin to understand the dynamics of the Kingdom.
There is probably several ways of taking these passages.
All these passages like the one on the mustard seed – you think it talks of the church that is a tiny group of people just twelve disciples and then on the day of Pentecost to 120 people and today the gospel has spread to many parts! Wow!
Or you put little bit of yeast in the dough and whole bit is leavened. Very tiny bit of yeast and such big results!!
But the problem is Jesus has already interpreted these parables and these images are not very good! Jesus is describing the church and not the world. He has told us the field is the world – and when you hear the word world, I think of John 3:16, “God so loved the world…” John goes on to say that not everybody is saved, but everybody is condemned and those who believe in Jesus inherit eternal life.
So the Kingdom of God is not necessarily the world, but it is those who receive the Word. The Kingdom of God is like this field, the world where the seed has been planted, and those who have received the seed make up the kingdom. But in the field, you have the good and bad seed. So we’ll take groups of parables together as they go in categories.
The parables of the weeds, the yeast, the mustard seed and the net are all the same. The details differ but the overall points are the same.
Few points from these parables:
There are good plants and there are bad plants in the Kingdom of God, the church. The field is the world, the seed is the Word of God and the plants are people. We get that from the first parable in Matthew13. This is seen in the good seed and the bad, and the good fish and the useless stuff in the net.
ILLUSTRATION:
I was the Associate Pastor at a church in Southern California. There was A man who came to the church and wanted to talk to me. He said he was in counseling with someone and wanted me to call him. So I called the counselor. He had been arrested for molesting children. I said, “Well, maybe you can help me with some guidelines because I do not want to kick him out of church also. He needs ministry and we need to bring him out of the bondage he is in.” The counselor said that she cannot really advice about him because of the lawsuit, but can give hypothetical answers to the hypothetical questions that I ask.
So I asked, “If I had a man who was into molesting children, can I use him in the children’s ministry?”
She said, “No, I would not recommend.”
I said, “Would you recommend some guidelines – would you recommend that I do not let him ever be alone with a child?”
She said, “Yes, I think so. Make sure he is never alone with a child in the church, if you have such a person in the church.”
So I began going through the guidelines and I talked to this young man. I said, “I am very happy for you to be here in the church. But since you have this problem, you need to follow these guidelines if you are to be in the church.”
The next week I found him alone with a 9 year old, although doing something innocent. So I warned him that he may have to leave if he did not follow the guidelines. I ended up asking the man to leave eventually because he did not follow the guidelines.
So in the church, we will have people who are fruit bearing and also non-fruit bearing Christians. But you will not know who they are until they grow up to maturity. So many times I look at plants and I cannot figure out what kind of plants they are. But as you wait for it to grow up, you can then find out what kind of plant it is.
It is not our job to pull out the weeds. Who knows, maybe a weed by the miracle of God’s work can become a wheat and begin to bear fruit. We do not really know. What we should do is whether WE are wheat or weed and not sit to evaluate if the other person is a wheat or a weed.
But to warn you, wolves are something different! They are sheep with wolves’ clothing. So this man in the illustration, I had to ask him to leave, because he was a danger to the sheep. The good shepherd has to take care of the sheep and make sure that they are not exposed to that kind of danger. You have someone who is blatantly living in sin, then you have to deal with them. We will talk about that when we come to Matthew 18.
Maybe someone in the church you are thinking is not a deeply grounded believer, you can shake hands and everything, but not become best friends with him. Because they can pull out your own fruitfulness. They are carnal Christians. They look like they believe, yet not living godly lives according to God’s purposes. So, I believe Jesus is giving a warning to everybody in the church that just because someone is in the church does not mean that you can trust them.
2. Unusual and unnatural growth is one aspect of the kingdom, one which is not necessarily good.
There are good big churches and do not get me wrong. But unusual, unnatural growth is not necessarily good. There are more plants in the field than the Master has planted; more plants even in the church. Growth is created and resulted in unwanted elements in the church.
Yeast is not such a good thing. Yeast symbolizes:
• A symbol of false teaching – Jesus said, “beware of the yeast of the scribes and the Pharisees.” Beware of their false teaching
• A symbol of unfaithfulness or sin – I Cor.5:6 – “Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole bunch of the dough. Get rid of the old yeast that you maybe a new batch without yeast…”
If you are Jewish and you celebrate the Passover, you get all of the yeast out of the house.
You do spring cleaning around the Easter time! The mothers would get all the kids clean up the house as much as they can. She would put little packets of yeast, to see if they would really get into all the nooks and corners of the house to get everything clean. And when the kids find them, they would get a little reward for that. So you clean out the house – you clean out the yeast.
So Paul is saying get rid of the yeast to keep the festival. He says, “Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
So weeds are bad elements in the church and the mustard seed growing into a tree where the birds nest in. From the previous parable, we see that the birds are actually demons. So you have nice, flourishing growing church, and what kind of creatures are likely to come?
These parables are disturbing if you look at them this way. Jesus knew what was going to happen in our day. So in the church you will have unfruitful, weeds sitting right next to the wheat, planted by the enemy. Then you will have demons wanting to come in to snatch the seeds and making home in the church.
ILLUSTRATION:
I have to talk about one of the largest churches in the world, and I have been there. They have grown to a huge size because they have these 5 pillars of the faith. They call it the five-fold Gospel, which is kind of strange to me. I thought the gospel is: Jesus comes to die for our sins, we believe in Him and we have eternal life. We accept the sacrifice of His blood as an offering for our sin. But they have five-fold, I have only one fold!
Among the five-fold gospel is that healing is guaranteed in the gospel. Sickness is a result of sin, and Jesus has redeemed us from sin and therefore, He has redeemed us from sickness.
They also teach that prosperity is part of the Gospel. They say that Jesus came to live in poverty so that we can live in riches.
So Jesus came and walked on bare feet or maybe sandals, so that I could drive a Mercedes?? If you expand the Gospel to include things like this, what you are doing is you are teaching false doctrines. It is YEAST. Yeast makes things puff up!
3. It is not our job to judge whether someone in the church is a weed or bad fish or bird, that is God’s job. He will take care of it on the Day of Judgment. If we try to pull out weeds, we will end up hurting good people on the process. This is not a negation of church discipline. It means there are unfruitful Christians who may work to prevent us from bearing good fruit.
So parents - if your kids are hanging out from friends from church and you are happy, usually that is good but is not necessarily good. Just because these kids are at church does not mean that they are leading them to a great walk with Christ!
The parable of the treasure and the pearl of great price are different.
One perspective is that the kingdom of God is the treasure and we are the ones who find it in the field and we give up everything we have got and we go buy it. That is one way of looking at it.
You do not have to look at it the way I look at it. Read your commentaries, study to show yourself approved and if you come to a different conclusion - that is alright. This seems to me though, if the field is the world, who has purchased the world? Did you or I buy it? Did I purchase the world to get the kingdom of God? God so loved the world…it is God who has purchased the world to get this treasure. As far as God is concerned you are the treasure and He is willing to lay down everything to have you. The church is of such great value even with these corruptions that Jesus said, He has bought it with the highest possible price so that He can have this imperfect, messed up, weed filled, bird inviting church – He loved it so much!
We think about pearls. Many might have pearls at home and you do not wear it everyday. Even 200 years ago only royalty would wear them. They did not have these large farms where pearls are grown in the oyster farms, and they would irritate the oyster and it would grow a pearl.
ILLUSTRATION:
Cleopatra made a bet with Mark Antony. She said, “I bet you, I can eat the wealth of an entire nation in one meal.” And Mark Antony said, “Okay, I will take you up on the bet. Let me see you take the wealth of an entire nation in one meal.” According to Plyne, he tells the story, Cleopatra had two of the most valuable pearls in the world of that day. She wore them as earrings. So she took out one of the earrings, removed the pearl, dropped it in her wine glass and the wine was acidy enough that it actually dissolved the pearl, and she simply had to drink it. And she won the bet with Mark Anthony – in one meal she actually had the wealth of the entire nation, because that pearl was valuable in that day as some nation’s entire wealth.
So a pearl was thought of in a very different way in that day. You have to think of the price that is paid just to get one pearl! By nature, you might get a good, sellable pearl in one out of a thousand oysters. And oysters like to hang out around 40 feet deep in the water.
If you do not have scuba gear, flippers and rubber outfit, it is a very dangerous thing to jump 40 feet down. That is where you find sharks and dangerous creatures that hang out in the place where you find oysters. And you have to go through a thousand oysters to get to one pearl that is sellable – you get the image? Imagine getting an oyster and you come up to catch your breath and then to find – no pearl. You do that again and again for a thousand times, and you finally get a pearl. But the idea that you might lose your life in the process is a big possibility.
THE TREASURE AND THE FIELD – Matt.13:44-46
You think of this man and wonder why did he not just pick up the pearl in his pocket and walk out? Why put it back? Well – there were no banks back then. And if they had a great treasure, you did not want to keep it in the house lest thieves break in and take it. So the best thing was to dig a hole and put it in there.
In Palestine, you have these conquerors come in and then people are carried away as captives. And where the treasure is, is forgotten. So maybe the next generation comes and finds it there.
So we are talking about a person who did not know that it is there. In the rabbinic teaching, they say if you find a treasure, it is yours. This man is going beyond the tradition of his day. Rather than taking the pearl and assuming that it is his, he buys that field from the man. He purchases the property so he can own it.
The treasure really belongs to God and He is willing to pay the greatest price that He has to pay to get the treasure as rightfully as His. We are His workmanship, His poetry, His work of art, created for good works in Christ Jesus. He has purchased the purchase price of the world. We were sold into slavery to sin; He has paid the price that He might have the whole world just so that He might get the treasure of those who would believe in Him, the church. Beautiful image!
We come of the end of the chapter and there are parallels.
We are talking about bearing fruit and not bearing fruit; being in the Kingdom of God and experiencing God’s power and being in God’s Kingdom and inhibiting God’s power. At the end of the chapter, Jesus goes to His hometown and they say, “Who is this guy? We know his parents, and his brothers and sisters.”
The teaching that is part of the church history which says Mary was a perpetual virgin cannot be true when actually she had so many children! You have Jesus, and then you have the names of his brothers and sisters as well. Jesus was the firstborn and she did not have the benefit of any sexual relations for bearing Him. The Muslims are completely wrong when they say that God had sex with a woman! No! If you really believe in God, He did not have to have sex to create life. He speaks life into existence. So He spoke life into the womb of Mary. That whole teaching is so odd and unnecessary to what the Bible is clearly teaching.
Matthew 13:51-52
The man trained in the things of the Kingdom brings out his treasure, both old and new. You have the old lessons of wisdom and God’s nature. You can go to the Old Testament and Proverbs and you can see the wisdom of God’s nature. And we have the new, fresh way in which God way reaches to this generation. His mercies are true and new every morning.
In the final passage of the chapter, God’s work can actually be enabled or limited by our response. Our response really determines whether we are wheat or weeds.
