Kingdom Parables, Part 2

Now remember that Matthew has presented Jesus Christ as king. He has come to bring his kingdom. John the Baptist said he would bring a kingdom.

Jesus did what John said he would. He offered a kingdom. He talked of the kingdom. He taught of the kingdom. And he called people to acknowledge him as the king.

When you hear someone say something like, the God I believe in wouldn't send people to hell, how do you respond? It's as though people think they can dictate the way things ought to be in the kingdom of God. The fact is, God is the king of his kingdom.

Our job is to learn about the king and the standards he sets. Well, as John MacArthur has explained here on Grace to You, that is where the parables of the kingdom come in. Each parable that Jesus taught gives you a glimpse of kingdom life, life under God's rule. And it's not just a preview of the future in heaven. It's also an illustration of how you should live today.

And with that, here's John. His study is called The Parables of the Kingdom. Let's look together at the Word of God, the 13th chapter of Matthew's gospel. As we approach Matthew 13, we're really approaching one of the monumental chapters in all of the pages of Holy Scripture.

It is a marvelously prophetic chapter. The Lord talks about things that are going to come to pass in the church age. And so it is tremendously important for us to understand this chapter, because this is the age in which we live and work and serve the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we must understand the nature of this age. Now remember that Matthew has presented Jesus Christ as King. He has shown us beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus is the anointed of God, the Messiah, the Christ, the King, the Savior of the world. He has come to bring His kingdom. John the Baptist said He would bring a kingdom.

Jesus did what John said He would. He offered a kingdom. He talked of the kingdom.

He taught of the kingdom. And He called people to acknowledge Him as the King. However, by the time you reach Matthew 13, they have rejected the King and they have refused His kingdom.

And so we are at a monumental point in redemptive history. The people of God called out of the loins of Abraham who were to be the channel through whom the world would be blessed, who are the channel through whom the kingdom would come and by whom and by whose King it would be ruled. These people have refused the King and they have refused His kingdom. And so as we come to chapter 13, the kingdom is postponed.

The kingdom cannot come when the people of the King refuse the King. And so the kingdom is postponed to a future time, a later time, a time when the people of Israel will accept the King, will acknowledge His kingdom and thereby receive it in its fullness. The time then between the rejection and the return is a time that we call the mystery form of the kingdom because it is a time hidden from all generations past. In verse 11 of chapter 13, Jesus calls it the mystery.

That's His term. No one has ever known the details of this period of time until chapter 13. And Jesus gives us the first description. That description is built upon throughout the remainder of the New Testament, but this is where it all begins. Now just to give you a little idea of how the Old Testament sees this mystery period, turn with me to the 12th chapter of the prophecy of Zechariah.

And this will serve as an illustration to us of the fact that indeed this period is a mystery. In Zechariah chapter 12 and 13 and 14, we find the word concerning the conversion of Israel and the establishment of the great kingdom of the Lord, but there are several details within that that I want you to note. Chapter 12 verse 10, And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplications and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son and shall be in bitterness for him as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn in that day shall there be a great mourning. Now what is this saying? It's saying that there is going to come a day when the people of Israel will look upon the one they pierced, and that speaks of the crucifixion, and they will mourn that they ever did that and they will be bitter that they ever did that. And then chapter 14 tells us in verse 4, And his feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives which is before Jerusalem on the east and the Mount of Olives shall cleave in its midst toward the east and toward the west and there shall be a very great valley and half of the mountains shall remove toward the north and half toward the south. This is the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ splitting open the hillside of the hillside there, the Mount of Olives. Then it says in verse 9, And the Lord shall be king over all the earth in that day shall there be one Lord and his name one.

Now what do we see? Zechariah says there will be a piercing, there will be a killing, there will be a rejection. And the prophets saw that. And later on a mourning on the part of the people of God, and then a salvation of the people of God, and then the establishment of the kingdom.

But the one thing they never saw was what happens between the rejection and the mourning, what happens between the refusal to receive the king and the time they will receive the king. That is the mystery period hidden from all generations past, never discussed in the pages of Holy Writ until Jesus opens our understanding here in the 13th chapter of Matthew. And now we have that part of redemptive history that's known as the parenthesis, the interregnum or the interim filled up in our understanding by the words of our Lord. Now we could also say that this is the church age.

That's just another term for the same period of time. It will end when Jesus takes the church out as it began when he called the church into being. Now as we look at Matthew 13, I want to give you just a general overview and a sense of what's going on in the mind of our Lord as he teaches here. Three points that I want you to note. The plan, the purpose, and the promise. And I think these three will help us to get a grasp of this great chapter. First is the plan, verse 3. And he spoke many things unto them in parables. In parables. The plan of our Lord was to speak in parables. A very important reason was in his mind as we shall see in our second point.

But let's discuss that plan. It says at the beginning of verse 3 that he spoke many things. And I believe that all of the parables here in this chapter were spoken at one time on this very occasion, the very day that he left the house and went to the seashore and the multitude gathered and he went out offshore in a little boat. That very occasion was the occasion in which he gave these parables.

It is possible that the parables included in the other gospels were also given on that day and Matthew does not include them all. It is even possible that he taught beyond what is recorded in Holy Writ. But nonetheless, he spoke many things. Now, he only spoke those things in parables. It says in verse 34, all these things spoke Jesus unto the multitude in parables. And without a parable spoke He not unto them. He spoke to them in parables and only in parables.

Listen carefully. He did not even explain the parables to the multitudes. He only spoke, it says in verse 34, unto the multitude in parables. Now, what is a parable?

Parabale. It really means para meaning alongside. It means to lay something alongside something else, to place something alongside something else so that a comparison can be made. That's basically what it came to mean, a comparison or an illustration. You have a spiritual truth that may be hard to be understood. You lay alongside of it a physical earthly story which gives understanding to that spiritual truth. That is a parable. The term parabale is used in the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, 45 times which indicates to us that it was a very common form of Jewish teaching.

It is an extended comparison. It is taking something very, very external, very observable, very objective, very earthly and laying it alongside something spiritual, supernatural, heavenly and subjective so that one helps you to understand the other. I guess you could sum it up by saying it's an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.

That is a parable. And any good teacher knows that you must communicate to people in terms of parables. You must communicate to people in terms of analogies to life. You cannot just talk in the supernatural dimension or in abstraction. You must draw alongside those theological concepts and spiritual concepts that which is concrete and earthy so that they can understand the more difficult from that which is readily understood.

And so Jesus here teaches profound spiritual lessons about a period of time no one ever knew about and He does it in the most simple terminology so that those whom He wishes to understand can understand very easily. He uses a field. He uses grain. He uses birds and a road and thorns and the sun and wheat and tares and mustard seeds and a tree and a leaven and a treasure and a pearl. And He talks about a net and He talks about a householder.

Those are all very, very common terms to those people in their agrarian and agricultural lifestyle. Now let me tell you why parables are effective and I'll give you four reasons. First of all, because they make truth concrete. They make truth concrete. By that I mean most people think in pictures and they take abstract concepts and make pictures out of them.

We may not understand the concept of spreading the gospel, but we do understand it when we see a man throwing seed in a field. They make truth. They objectify truth and make it concrete. Secondly, they therefore make truth portable.

And by that I mean that if you remember the story and you carry the story in your mind, you can always recover its spiritual meaning because all of the elements are there in the story. And so they allow truth to be carried away. Thirdly, they make truth interesting. They reduce it from a rather dull sort of ethereal thoughts down to life situations that carry interest and grab our attention.

And fourthly, they make truth personally discoverable. In other words, as the story goes, you begin to internalize the spiritual truth and see it in the story so that you internalize that truth yourself. So parables are a marvelous mode of teaching because they make truth concrete, portable, interesting, and personally discoverable. And thus our Lord spoke in parables. As the Hebrews commonly did, they used the term mashal to speak of their parabolic teaching. Now the Lord then is going to use parables.

That's His plan. And as you begin to look at the chapter, you see a sequence of parables. Let me just briefly introduce you to these parables. And as I basically describe the parable without reading the details, I want to draw out of it the truth that Jesus is teaching in each parable.

And you will see the description of the church age, the first time it is ever described from the viewpoint of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now the first parable occurs from verse 4 or 5 right on through verse 23. And it is a parable about a sower and a seed. He went into the fields and He sowed the seed. Now this is depicting the preaching of the gospel throughout the world. Some people will initially reject it.

Stony ground. Some people will initially receive it, but the thorns or the sun will cause them to fall away. Some people will initially receive it and ultimately bring forth fruit.

What is the Lord saying? Simply this, the gospel will be preached throughout the world. Some will hear it and reject. Some will hear it and accept for a while and fall away. Some will hear it and believe and bring forth fruit.

A very simple principle. We'll never win the whole world. I don't think some people yet understand that.

We will never win the whole world. The second parable in verses 24 to 30 is a parable of the wheat and the tares. There's a parable of the wheat and the tares.

A field. Wheat is sown in the field. While the workers sleep, the enemy comes and sows tares which look exactly like wheat. And they crowd the wheat and ruin the crop, but you can't pull them out because you can't tell them from the wheat.

So you have to let them alone until the harvest. And what is the Lord saying about this period of time? He is saying there will be true believers and false believers and false believers. There will be people within the identification of the kingdom, people saying they belong, people moving along with the rest who are the genuine who will be false. And ultimately God will barn the true and burn the false.

And what is the principle? We will never purge the church. Throughout this period of the kingdom, we're going to have the true and the false side by side coexisting until judgment.

So we're not shocked when we find out that there are unbelievers in the church. The third parable is given in verse 31 and 32, and it's a parable about a mustard seed which is one of the smallest of all the seeds. And it was planted in the ground and it bloomed and became a huge tree so big that birds could come and live in it. That means it had big, huge branches to support birds.

It wasn't just a bush as a mustard seed normally would produce a very small bush. And the point here is that the church age will begin with a very small beginning, very small, and yet it will grow to massive proportions big enough to be a haven for birds. What does that say? That the kingdom will begin small and it will become world wide.

It will become widespread and influential and all kinds of things are going to live in its branches. And then there was the parable of the leaven which said essentially the same thing. The leaven represents the kingdom buried as it were in the dough of the world which ultimately will penetrate and permeate and influence the whole earth.

And the parable of the leaven shows the internal permeating influence of the kingdom which touches every dimension of human life. In verse 44, we find the next parable of the treasure hidden in a field and a man is working in the field and he stumbles across this treasure and he buys the field because he's an honest man. He doesn't steal the treasure. He makes a deal and buys the whole field and then gets the treasure that's in it.

What does this say? The treasure is salvation. The treasure is redemption. And when it is found, the man does all he can, sells everything he owns in order to get that. There will be people in this kingdom period who will give up everything to get the treasure. The interesting note about this parable is that the man wasn't looking for the treasure. It was in the routine of his work a day life that he was surprised by the reality of redemption.

And there are many people who will come to know Jesus Christ in this period who will stumble as it were almost by accident upon the grace of God. The next parable in verse 45 is a parable of a man with the desire to find a pearl and he seeks and seeks and seeks, finds pearls, finally finds the one that he wants, sells everything and buys it. Just like the last parable, this man is willing to pay the supreme price which is always the giving up of everything to purchase redemption.

It's always that. And he takes this pearl. The difference is that this man has all the while been seeking for that pearl. And this tells us that there will also be people in the kingdom who will spend a great amount of time seeking the truth and finally find it. Some people will come without ever seeking.

As C.S. Lewis put it, surprised by joy. Other people will spend long time and effort endeavoring to find the truth. And then the last parable in verse 47 is that of a net. And everything is pulled into the net and the good separated from the bad. And this picture is the end of the church age, the end of the mystery kingdom when Jesus pulls it all together and sorts out the true from the false. Now that is a tremendously profound insight into our time. And we can verify every one of those, can't we?

All of those we know to be true of this time. The mystery kingdom, the church age is big. We have influenced the world. We have preached our message across the globe.

We've seen that come to pass. But we also see that the church is mixed with good and evil, isn't it? The true and the false, the wheat and the tares. And we know that as we proclaim, some reject and some accept for a little while and some are real and produce the fruit.

We know that the enemy attacks us. We know we're influenced by the world and we never seem to be able to purge the church. And we know there are people searching for God and sometimes going through religion after religion to find the answer. And there are others who seemingly right out of the blue are introduced to redemption. All of it in the end will be made clear by Christ. So this is the character of our time.

This is how it will be before the king returns. Now go back to the thought of parables in verse 3. So the Lord teaches all of this in parables.

Now listen very carefully. At the end of the chapter, admittedly, while parables explain things and parables help us understand things and parables make things clear, listen, when they are explained to us, an unexplained parable is nothing but an impossible riddle. An unexplained parable is an impossible riddle, unable to be understood. And that is why he had to explain everything, even to his own disciples. In Mark 4 10, indicating the same occasion, when he was alone, they that were about him with the 12 asked of him the parable. And he said to them, unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but unto those who are outside, all these things are done in parables.

He said, it's only for you. Jesus only explained the parables to the 12 and those who believed, not to the rest. All they got was unexplained parables, and those are nothing but riddles, unable to be understood. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for tuning in today. John is chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. His current series is looking at the parables of the kingdom. John, as you said today, part of the brilliance of the parables is the universality with which they can be applied. They apply in every context, and you can teach them in any culture, any language, and yet there is one thing about all of these parables that remains the same no matter what context you put it in. Yeah, Jesus taught these parables not as stories that could be manipulated to mean anything or everything, but as stories that had one specific, clear meaning. And that's the way they always have to be interpreted in every generation. So when teaching the parables, you want to go back, understand the meaning which our Lord clearly lays out in Matthew 13, as he does in his parables elsewhere, and when you discover that meaning, that is the permanent meaning of those parables. I think sometimes people think that Jesus is talking in some kind of mystical language, and you can kind of manipulate it to mean whatever you want it to mean. Quite the contrary. These are not allegories.

These are not stories with all kinds of complex points. They basically have one meaning, and that meaning is crystal clear. Understanding the meaning again, we say this all the time, is the whole point of the Bible.

What does it matter if you read the words and don't understand the meaning? So I want to remind you again about the MacArthur Study Bible. We have so many beautiful additions of this—hardback, premium leather. We have it in the New American Standard. We have it in the ESV, the New King James.

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All these various versions are reasonably priced. You can order the MacArthur Study Bible today, and we'll ship it free in the U.S. Yes, this is a theological library in one volume. The 25,000 study notes will help you know God's Word more fully and apply its truth to your life. To order the MacArthur Study Bible, contact us today.

You can call our toll-free number, 800-55-GRACE, or visit our website, gty.org. Again, the MacArthur Study Bible comes in hardcover, leather, and softcover versions. And you can choose from the English Standard, New King James, and New American Standard versions.

See all of the options available and place your order online at gty.org, or you can call us at 800-55-GRACE. And friend, if John's current study on the parables of the kingdom has prompted a few questions, let me remind you about John's book, simply titled, Parables. It shows you how Christ used these stories with a purpose to memorably teach his followers and believers today about justice and grace and heaven and hell and persistence in prayer and loving your neighbor and much more. To get a copy of the parables book, call 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. That's our website. One more time, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the staff, I'm Phil Johnson. And remember, you can watch Grace to You television Sundays on DirecTV channel 378, or you can watch online at gty.org. But come back tomorrow for another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.