OUR FATHER WHOSE PLAN TO SAVE US WAS FORETOLD BY HIS PROPHETS

After telling the crowd people the parable of the  sower, the disciples of Jesus were curious as to why He was using parables instead of  speaking plainly. They thought it was counter-productive to have a captive audience but then tell them indecipherable stories. Mathew chapter 13 verses 10 - 17 captures Jesus response to this query;

10 And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”

11 He answered and said to them, “Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. 12 For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. 13 Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. 14 And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says:

‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand,

And seeing you will see and not perceive;

15 For the hearts of this people have grown dull.

Their ears are hard of hearing,

And their eyes they have closed,

Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears,

Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn,

So that I should heal them.’

16 But blessed are your eyes for they seme, and your ears for they hear; 17 for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

In responding to the disciples' question, the Lord referred to a prophecy in Isaiah chapter 6 verses 9 - 10 which foretold that the peoples' hearts would be dull and their eyes closed and ears shut and would not understand lest they comprehend what was available for them and they turn and be redeemed.

The plan was for Israel to reject the messiah and if Jesus taught too clearly, they might have understood and repented and this would have short-circuited the salvation process. 

The rejection of the Messiah by Israel gave a chance for gentiles in all the rest of the world to hear the gospel and be grafted into the stem of Israel but when the gentiles have reached their fullness,  all Israel will be saved. 

Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHOSE WORD IS SOWN ABROAD TO GAIN A GREAT HARVEST

Matthew chapter 13 verses 1 - 9 says this;

1 On the same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea. 2 And great multitudes were gathered together to Him, so that He got into a boat and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.

3 Then He spoke many things to them in parables, saying: “Behold, a sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them. 5 Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. 

6 But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. 7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them. 8 But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 9 He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

Interestingly, the events this passage describe begin on the same day on which the events at the end of the previous chapter occured. 

While teaching the multitudes who were following Him, Jesus had a confrontation with the pharisees regarding their demand to be shown a supernatural sign in order to validate what He was teaching. Jesus denied their request and called the pharisees and evil and adulterous generation who would be judged by history.

The political shockwaves that resulted, motivated Jesus' family to come  to His meetings to pursuade Him to go home with them to save Him from the wrath of the powers of the time.

Jesus, left the house and went to sit by the sea where the crowd followed Him. To avoid getting overun, Jesus got onto a boat and began to speak to the people on shore from the boat.

He spoke many cryptic parables to the crowd but the one recorded in this passage is the famous parable of the sower who went into a field to sow and as he scattered the seeds, they fell in four distinct environments where four distinct outcomes were observed;

• On the wayside where people walked
• Birds devoured the exposed seeds
• On stony shallow soil
• Seeds germinated quickly but soon died
• Among thorns
• Seeds were choked by competition
• In deep good soil
• Seeds took root and yielded a harvest

This parable marks a change in gear for the Lord Jesus. Up to this point, He had been teaching about the kingdom of God, its moral structure and its code of conduct.

In this passage, Jesus starts speaking about the dynamics of spreading the good news of the kingdom of God with attention to the conditions that affect the results of distributing the word of God among the people.

Even though the stories he was telling the people were relatable because their subject matter was based on familiar agrarian themes, they were mysterious as to their meaning.

In the next section, we will see Jesus' disciples asking about why the Lord was teaching in opaque parables and we will discuss the Lord's explanation for this and His exposition of the parable of the sower.

Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHO BRINGS US INTO HIS FAMILY THROUGH FAITH IN JESUS

At one point while Jesus' was talking to the group of people, He got word from the outside of the gathering place that His mother and brothers wanted to speak to Him. Matthew chapter 11 verses 46 - 50 captures the moment;

46 While He was still talking to the multitudes, behold, His mother and brothers stood outside, seeking to speak with Him. 47 Then one said to Him, “Look, Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside, seeking to speak with You.”

48 But He answered and said to the one who told Him, “Who is My mother and who are My brothers?” 49 And He stretched out His hand toward His disciples and said, “Here are My mother and My brothers! 50 For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother.”

The event in this passage parallels the verse in Mark chapter 3 verse 21 that says this;

But when His own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for they said, “He is out of His mind.”

The Lord Jesus was holding  high profile meetings with religious leaders getting i to confrontatkons with Him and His family became concerned for Him thinking that He had gone over the top.

His mother and brothers came to try talk Him out of His activities because of the political tension that His ministry was stirring up.

When Jesus was informed that his mother and brothers were waiting to speak to Him, He said to the one who brought the information that His mother and brothers and sisters were those who were following Him and who did the will of His Father in heaven.

The Lord Jesus was viewed as being out of His mind by His own family and those who follow Him can expect to bear the same burden especially those believers who convert from other religions or philosophies.

They are sometimes seen by their family and friends as having gone insane but this is a cross to carry that Jesus Himself bore.

Another reality revealed in this passage is that the kingdom of God is a family and all those who are obedient to its calling automatically become each other's brothers and sisters and also become siblings of Jesus Himself.

Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHOSE SON WAS REJECTED BUT BECAME THE CHIEF CORNERSTONE

Having told the religious leaders (who were asking for a sign be shown to them) that they were out of step with the calendar of God's plan, the Lord Jesus informed them that they would thus be condemned by people out of history who had grappled with far less knowledge than they had in search of God's mercy and wisdom.

Then Jesus, in an unusual fashion, used a parable based on a demonic spiritual reality to elucidate the condition of the generation that was not prepared to receive the Messiah who had been sent to them.

Matthew chapter 12 verse 43 - 45 tells of the journey of an evicted demon that returns to its original home and finding it cleaned and prepared for habitation, recruits other spirits and together, they invade the man and his condition is worse than before.  

43 “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. 44 Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. 45 Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation.”

In the parable, the nation of Israel is the man and the demon is the religious and political status quo that had established itself in the society.

The plan of God was to bring salvation to Israel and then to the whole world and so preparation was made where the people were taught about the coming kingdom of God and the house is Israel was cleaned up to be ready for the Holy Spirit to inhabit. 

However, the kingdom of God was resisted by Israel and the  Messiah was killed leaving Israel available to be inhabited by their original usurping spirit alongside additional pathological conditions and this left Israel in worse shape that it was before.

As the scripture says; 

"So shall it also be with this wicked generation.”

The wicked generation that rejected the promised Messiah was going to suffer condemnation from history and be saddled with worse political and spiritual oppression than they were exposed to before.

Lord have mercy on us.

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OUR FATHER WHOSE WAYS ARE PERFECT

From Psalm 119 - Beth

I sing to You my precious Lord

For in my heart I  hid Your word

Teach me  that I may always know

The narrow path on which to go

That on Your righteous road I stay

And from Your will I never stray

As I think of Your perfect way

I will delight in what You say

My Jesus, My Jesus,

There is none like You

There is no one else like You

Psalm 119 - Beth - 9 - 16

9 How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word.

10 I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands.

11 I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

12 Praise be to you, Lord; teach me your decrees.

13 With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth.

14 I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches.

15 I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. 

16 I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.

OUR FATHER WHOSE SON WAS THE CHIEF CORNERSTONE THAT THE BUILDERS TURNED AWAY

The Lord Jesus spoke to the Pharisees about their blasphemy of the Holy Spirit and how their words would condemn them on the day of judgement and in response to the unbraiding they received, the discomfitted pharisees then felt that the hearsay stories of Jesus' miracles were not enough for them and so they wanted to see a miracle with their own eyes so that they could judge whether Jesus was worthy to school them the way He was.

38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.”

39 But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 

41 The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.

42 The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and indeed a greater than Solomon is here.

The answer Jesus gave to their request for a supernatural sign was an epic revelation of the momentous grandeur of the mission of salvation that He, the Messiah, had come to fulfill.

The pharisees' request for a sign was denied but they were alerted that there would be one pivotal sign that was available to them and that was the sign that the story of the prophet Jonah foreshadowed.

Just as Jonah went down into the depths of the sea in the belly of a great fish for three days and three nights before rising again, the Son of Man would descend into the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.

This sign, that was the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, was the only sign that would be given to the evil and adulturous generation.

Unbeknownst to the pharisees, they were going to play a part in the events that the Lord Jesus was describing and the fact that that they missed the day of their visitation was going to be the basis for a historical condemnation against them.

Jonah went to Nineveh with no signs and yet upon his preaching, the whole city repented in ashes. In contrast, One far greater than Jonah had come to them with healing in His wings and that generation did not repent but instead demanded signs be performed before them.

The queen of Sheba is also going to condemn that generation because she arduosly travelled a great distance to come hear the wisdom  of Solomon and even though One greater than Solomon was among them teaching wisdom,  instead of troubling themselves to learn from Him, they demanded a sign.

All the figures of history who hungered and yearned for God on the basis of faint traces of the workings of the Spirit of God will rise up to condemn the generation that had the Son of God, powered by the Spirit of God, moving around in their midst.

Have mercy on us O God.

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OUR FATHER TO WHOM JESUS WILL INTRODUCES US IF WE CONFESS JESUS BEFORE MEN

Matthew chapter 12 verses 33 - 37 records the continuation of the sharp reprimand that Jesus directed at the pharisees who were denegrating the work of God amoung the people. 

They had declared to the people that Jesus' ability to cast out demons stemmed from His cooperation with the kingdom of darkness.

Jesus immediately showed them that their claim was illogical and informed them of the terrible price they would pay for blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

In our passage, Jesus continued with the castigation of the Pharisees as follows;

33 “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit. 34 Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. 36 But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. 37 For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Trees in the scriptures are frequently used a metaphors for kingdoms or administrative juridictions and here, Jesus tells the pharisees that their administrative jurisdiction is yielding bad fruit because they had made a bad tree.

In this case, the corruption of the tree the pharisees had made manifested itself as the bad fruit of illogical accusations against people.

Calling the pharisees a 'brood of vipers', Jesus was alluding to the poisonous threat that the pharisees and their illogical postures represented.

He told them that because they had cultivated evil things in their hearts, there was no surprise that evil things came out of their mouths because of the principle described by the Lord Jesus where good things automatically  come out of the heart of s good man while evil things flow out of the hearts of evil men.

The Lord also took away the possible excuse that the pharisees' words were just passing observation and opinions because he said that in the day of judgement, all men would accountable for every idle word they spoke during their lifetimes.

All the words a man spoke would be the basis upon which he was justified or he was condemned.

If a man used words to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, those words would apear in the transcript against him in the court of final judgement and it is these words that would seal his eternal state.

This principle also applies to the use of words to declare belief and trust in the Lord Jesus before other people for these words, appearing in the transcript of ones' life, are the basis for the introduction that Jesus will make between one of those who trusted Him and God the Father.

“Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven.

Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHOSE SPIRIT MUST NOT BE BLASPHEMED

The Lord Jesus, having just previously told the pharisees that those who were not with Him were against Him and those who were not gathering with Him were scattering, said this stern warning to them;

31 “Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. 32 Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.

The pharisees found Jesus to be a potent rival for the hearts and minds of the people in the land of Israel and some of them began to plot how to get rid of Him so that they could hold onto their religious monopoly over the territory.

He was challenging the status quo in their understanding of the scripture and the kingdom of God was attesting to the validity of His ministry with astounding supernatural power and authority.

Jesus, in this passage, said that if the visceral reactions against Him out of envy or defensiveness caused the religious and political guard to speak against Him, these offences would be forgivable but, if they ventured beyond challenging Him and blashphemed the Holy Spirit who was the facilitator of the supernatural attestations of Jesus, they would have no pathway to forgiveness either in that time or in the time that was to come.

The pharisees, having attributed Jesus' ability to deliver people from demonic oppresion to the Beelzebub, had blasphemed the Holy Spirit who was the One who had powered the removal of the demons and the healing of the blind and mute.

The damning of the supernatural ministry of the Holy Spirit  is particularly aggrigeous because it undercuts the outreach that God Himself provides to stir up people's faith and by undermining this outreach, other people can be prevented from attaining a place of trust in God.

Even though there were some factions within the pharisaic order that began to take Jesus seriously like the one to which Nicodemus belonged to, the efforts of the particular pharisees who blasphemed the Holy Spirit, caused them to be excluded from ever reaching saving faith and for them, they were without remedy and in their unforgivable state, ended up pursuing the destruction of Jesus until they succeeded in having Him crucified.

Have mercy on us O God.

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