OUR FATHER WHOSE KINGDOM IS OF UNFATHOMABLE VALUE

The Lord Jesus concluded his exposition of the parable of the wheat and the tares with this statement in Matthew chapter 13 verse 43;

43 Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

Here, the righteous, who had paid the price and enrolled in the kingdom of their heavenly Father, are described by Jesus as shining brighter than the sun.

The Lord, wishing to drive home the point of how extremely valuable the kingdom of heaven is,  continued teaching his disciples, with the use of two very similar parables found in Matthew chapter 13 verses 44 - 46.

Both these parables describe the appropriate response to the discovery of the kingdom of heaven given the proper understanding of its value.

44 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, 46 who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

In the first parable, the Lord Jesus tells of a man who was prospecting on a piece of land when he stumbled upon a treasure that he immediately understood was highly valuable. He excitedly concealed the find and went off to sell off all his other holdings so that he could return and buy the field. The man did this discreetly so that the owner of the land did not know of the treasure and either refuse to sell the land to him or rachet up the price of the land to account for the presence of the treasure.

By starting the second parable with the word 'again', Jesus indicated that the second parable carried the same lesson as the first but he framed it in a different milieu.

Whereas the first was based in the context of a valuable substance hidden underground that was concealed from sight, the second was set in a jewelry market where a trader, looking through the inventory of pearls, discovered a particular pearl of very high value that no one else had detected.

He quietly went off to sell everything he owned in order to return to the market and buy the pearl that he had discovered.

These two parables speak of the serendipitous discovery of a very valuable thing that no one knew about. In the first case, the valuable thing was hidden from sight so that no one was aware that it was there until the man uncovered it. In the second case, the valuable thing was in plain sight alongside all the other low value pearls but everyone was ignorant of its actual value and passed up on the opportunity to buy it.

In both cases, the men, realizing the importance of what they had tripped over, ransacked their own lives in order to invest everything they owned in what they had discovered.

The two cases correspond to the two different backdrops that the good news of the kingdom finds its hearers in. Some people hear of the good news of the kingdom in a spiritually dry desert and immediately understand its value and jump at the chance to acquire membership. 

Other people, awash in a miriad of religions and philosophies, disern the unique value of the propositions of the kingdom of heaven and give their entire lives in exchange for it.

With these parables, twinned for emphasis, the Lord Jesus counsels us to divest ourselves of all our earthly holdings in order to possess the eternally priceless treasure of the kingdom of heaven.

Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHOSE SONS WILL SHINE LIKE THE SUN

After the events of the day concluded, the disciples asked the Lord Jesus to decode the parable of the wheat and the tares for them as recorded in Matthew chapter 13 verses 37 - 43;

36 Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.”

37 He answered and said to them: “He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. 39 The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. 

40 Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. 41 The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, 42 and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

The Lord explained the parable by associating the people and components of the parable with the reality they corresponded to;

• The owner who sowed good seeds was Jesus Himself
• The field being sowed was the world
• The good seeds were the sons of the kingdom
• The weeds were the sons of the wicked one
• The sower of bad seeds was the devil
• The harvest was the end of the age
• The harvesters were the angels

The activity at harvest time mirrors the activity at the end of the age where the sons of wickedness are  separated for destruction and eternal regret while the sons of the kingdom of God are separated for eternal glory. 

Lord have mercy on us.

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OUR FATHER WHOSE KINGDOM OPERATES BY MYSTERIES

Matthew chapter 13 verses 34 - 35 continues this way;

34 All these things Jesus spoke to the multitude in parables; and without a parable He did not speak to them, 

35 that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: “I will open My mouth in parables;

I will utter things kept secret from the foundation of the world.”

The parables the Lord taught were glimpses into the nature and form that the kingdom of God would take when it touched ground but the parables were designed to keep the things of the kingdom secret except to those who were being given the kingdom.

Keeping the things of the kingdom of God secret from the kingdom of darkness gave the kingdom of God the advantage so that its plans could unfold in plain sight but be completely opaque and mysterious to those who would try to thwart the purposes of God.

Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHO SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY SON

To teach His followers about the mechanics of establishing the kingdom of God in the earth, the Lord Jesus used a parable in Matthew chapter 13 verse 33;

33 Another parable He spoke to them: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened.”

The Lord Jesus used the concept of a woman taking an amount of a rising agent like yeast and then introducing it to a volume of flour. 

The woman then kneaded the dough with the yeast until the small quantity of yeast was distributed evenly throughout the flour and could act in all the sectors of the meal.

This is an illustration of how the kingdoms of this world would be infused with the rising agent of heaven such that they would all be acted upon by the agent.

The efforts of the woman, standing in for the church's work of distributing the good news of the kingdom on the earth as well as manifesting of the active agents of the kingdom of heaven, establishes the rulership of the Lord Jesus through the earth.

As Psalm 110 verse 2 says;

The Lord shall send the rod of Your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of Your enemies!

Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHOSE KINGDOM ON EARTH WILL OVERCOME DARKNESS AND BECOME THE GREATEST

The Lord Jesus continued to teach His disciples about the kingdom He was ushering in and He had explained to them how its moral framework worked and He had revealed the challenges that the kingdom would face from the kingdom of darkness and how those challenges would be overcome.

The Lord then gave the disciples a graphical illustration of the kingdom of heaven that was going to take root on the earth.

Matthew chapter 13 verses 31 - 32 says it this way;

 31 Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, 

32 which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.”

The parable of the mustard seed uses the theme of a seed to visualise how a tiny installation  package would be implanted on the earth and it would unfurl into the greatest kingdom on the planet.

The tiny mustard seed is the human form of the Lord Jesus that would die and and be buried in the earth.

Even though this singular event is a very small moment in human history, it would grow into a massive administrative structure overshadowing all other kingdoms on the earth.

The metaphor of trees as kingdoms or adminstrative juridictions is used frequently in  the scriptures like where, in Ezekiel 31 verse 3, the cedar tree is directly equated to a kingdom.

Behold, Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon, with beautiful branches and forest shade, and of towering height, its top among the clouds.

The mustard seed, though small, grows into a large tree but just as birds inhabit the branches of a mustard tree, evil spirits will find perches in the mustard tree in keeping with the idea that the kingdom of heaven will face challenges from the kingdom of darkness as the agents of darkness infiltrate the kingdom of light to try to corrupt it and destroy it.

Lord have mercy on us.

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OUR FATHER WILL SEPARATE THE SHEEP FROM THE GOATS ON JUDGEMENT DAY

 Continuing on the theme of the kingdom of God and how it operated among human beings, the Lord Jesus told the disciples another parable commonly known as the parable of the wheat and the tares (tares being a type of noxious weed).

Whereas the previous parable spoke of how the good news of the kingdom affected people differently depending on the conditions of their hearts, this parable revealed how the sowing of evil seeds is used by the kingdom of darkness to sabotage the kingdom of God and how this type of sabotage will be handled by God.

Matthew chapter 13 verses 24 - 30 says this;

24 Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. 26 But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. 

27 So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ 29 But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. 

30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ”

A land owner, careful to screen his seeds to eliminate weeds before planting, had put in his crop for the season and while the overseers were asleep at the switch, an enemy of the land owner came and dumped a bunch of  weed seeds onto the land.

No one from the landowner's side knew what had happened until the seeds started germinating and the crop started appearing but so did the weeds.

The landowner's employees came to him asking if he had indeed screened his seeds properly because the crop was growing alongside a large number of weeds.

The land owner immediately knew that he had been sabotaged by an enemy to destroy his crop. The employees proposed that they could go into the field and pull out the weeds.

To this point, we understand that the seeds are words that planted in mens hearts and in the case of the words of God, a crop ( which represents good men who serve God ) begins to grow from them. 

The saboteur, ( representing the devil and his kingdom ), snuck in under cover of darkness and spread their evil words and as a result, men, corrupted by the ways of darkness, emerge among the good crops as weeds.

The instinctive response to this situation would be to go in among the crop and try to isolate the weeds and pull them out as the employees of the landown suggested.

The land owner, more experienced in these matters, knew that an attempt to remove corrupt men from among the good men while they were growing together would be imprecise and would result in many good men being inadvertently uprooted.

This is especially true where the general code of conduct in the kingdom of God demands that good works be done in secret and so distinguishing the good people from the corrupt people by trying to access their deeds is often difficult.

The Lord determined that the most expedient response to the sabotage would be to let the good men and the corrupt men grow through life side by side in the congregations of church-goers  but when the day of judgement comes and everything is being uprooted, the weeds would be separated from the crop and incinerated while the good crop, after screening, would be moved into the house of God.

Lord have mercy on us.

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OUR FATHER WHOSE WORD YIELDS FRUIT IN HEARTS THAT UNDERSTAND

The Lord Jesus, when asked why He taught in parables explained that the news of the kingdom of God was not for the multitudes to understand but rather for the ones He had selected to carry His message from Jerusalem to Judea and to Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth.

He then decoded the parable of the sower to His disciples in Matthew chapter 13 verses 18 - 23;

18 “Therefore hear the parable of the sower:

 19 When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside. 20 But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; 21 yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles. 22 Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful. 23 But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.”

Jesus explained that the four different  ground environments into which the seeds fell represented the four different heart conditions that people were in when they hear the word of the kingdom of God.

He then explained that what resulted when the seeds fell into the different conditions, corresponded to what happened to the word of the kingdom after it landed in the hearts of men;

• On the hard wayside where people walked
• Hearts that don't understand
• Birds devoured the exposed seeds
• Evil spirits erase the word from their knowledge

• On stony shallow soil
• Hearts that are shallow
• Seeds germinated quickly but soon died
• Word received with joy but withers when pressure comes due to shallowness

• Among thorns
• Hearts that are  immersed in this world
• Seeds were choked by competition
• Worries and attractions of this world distract from the kingdom and they are rendered unfruitfull

• In deep good soil
• Hearts that understand the gravity of the kingdom and commit themselves to it
• Seeds took root and yielded a harvest
• The seeds germinate and are able to replicate themselves 30, 60 and 100 times over

The disciples of Jesus were given the key to understand how those who heard the word of the kingdom would respond and why they would respond in the way they do.

Implied in the parable are the steps that need to be taken in order to maximize their yield. As the went from community to community spreading the word,  they would have to;

• Ensure that their message was understood
• Cultivate resilience and endurance
• Teach recipients to detach from the world
• Invest in those who understood

Amen.

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