OK. So this is the Kingdom Parables, this is lesson number two in this
series. The title of this lesson is Types of Parables on the Kingdom. So last week
I introduced the idea of kingdom parables and I began with a history
of the ideas of King and kingdom, as they were developed
throughout the Old Testament all the way into the New Testament.
Now for those not here and those who may have forgotten there were a fewthat
key points I mentioned, that help us understand the idea of kingdom.
So just the little bit of review. First of all,
God introduced the idea of the kingdom of heaven and the Messiah
as a king, He introduced this idea very slowly throughout the Old Testament.
We talked about progressive revelation. That's the
idea where God reveals an idea but he does it in stages not all at once.
Also before Jesus arrived,
the people, the Jews, understood that the Messiah was to be a ruler
or a king of sorts, with supernatural
power, who would re-establish the kingdom of Judah here on Earth. So they were looking
for a kingdom much like the kingdom of Solomon with its glory and its
political power. That's what they were anticipating. When John the Baptist
came along and preached about the kingdom being near,
the people enthusiastically received his message. We read about all the people that
were coming out to John. It wasn't just because of John. It was what he was announcing. The kingdom,
that thing that you've been waiting for for centuries, well it's near.
And so people were baptized in order to prepare for the arrival of the kingdom.
And then when Jesus comes along and begins to preach, he corrects the
false ideas and interpretations about the Kingdom. And he revealed
the ideas about the kingdom that had not yet been understood.
For example, Jesus taught that the king and the
kingdom are united by faith and not by politics or culture.
He revealed that the Kingdom is a spiritual thing not a geopolitical thing.
He taught that the Kingdom is always evolving. In other words, what it is now
is not what it will be in the future. So once people heard
these teachings many of them turned away from Jesus because
he was not describing the kingdom that they had hoped for. The one that
they believed would eventually come. For example, many Jews
today still await and work towards the idea
of a geopolitical kingdom or a human messiah or ruler who will
deliver this kingdom to them. Mostly among the very orthodox Jews.
They still hold to a personal Messiah, many of them.
So for those who believe in Jesus and His teaching about the kingdom however, the
Lord continued to instruct them concerning the kingdom using parables.
And the reason that he used parables, threefold.
Number one, the people needed more teaching concerning this dimension that they were entering
and they were to dwell in forever. And so they needed instruction
about the Kingdom. And so Jesus provided that instruction. But he did it using
the form of parables. Secondly, He used parables because
He wanted only the disciples to understand Kingdom matters.
He didn't want unbelievers or his opponents to understand the things
that he was explaining concerning the kingdom. Oh they heard the story all right,
but they didn't understand the secondary meaning. And that was on purpose. And then thirdly, since the
kingdom was evolving, He wanted to instruct his
disciples in the differences between how the kingdom exists now
and what its final condition will be in the future.
And so we, you and I, we're among those who have believed and entered and we
exist within the kingdom of God. And for this reason we're studying
the parables to understand better this dimension in which we live.
We're in the kingdom.
This kingdom that he talked about, we're part of it, you and I.
And so we're studying the parables to understand what about
this kingdom that we exist in? What about this kingdom, how will it be in the future?
So for that reason we're focusing in on all the kingdom parables
that we read about in the New Testament, there are 13 of them.
I mentioned that last week. So we'll be studying parables and it would help to know
what a parable is. Very quickly.
A parable is a literary or storytelling or
teaching device. The word parable comes from
a Greek word which means to lay beside or to place alongside.
The point is that in a parable, you place a story or an idea,
which is simple to understand and you place it next
to a story or an idea which is complex or hidden.
So the simple story mirrors the complex story in order to make it understandable.
Jesus is explaining spiritual things. He's explaining things that happen in heaven.
He's explaining things that will happen in the future,
very difficult to understand, so he gives simple stories that
mirror or reflect the more complicated unseen things.
In Jesus's case, he would lay stories which were easily
visualized alongside principles and concepts in the spiritual world which
could not be seen. His parables, using earthly objects in
human situations, mirrored spiritual ideas
in the heavenly dimension. As I said, in the New Testament, Jesus spoke
actually 43 parables in all and of these 13
were about the Kingdom of Heaven.
Very quickly, the 13, five of them were agriculture. He used agricultural examples.
In four of them, He talks about money.
Two of them have situations involving feasts. One story about
fishing and another one an example using cooking as its basis.
So these examples for parables were not only easy for the people of that time to
understand, they're also generic to every culture and every age.
So every disciple, regardless of time and place, can relate to and learn from the
parables of the kingdom. That's not an easy thing. Imagine a story that if
someone 2000 years ago, quite removed from our American culture today,
living in Palestine, Israel, 2000 years ago,
agricultural, none of the technology that we have
today, and yet the parable that Jesus spoke to explain something in the kingdom
is as relevant today as it was then. We understand
the very same things from it. So really a marvelous, marvelous teaching tool.
So we're going to start our study with a review of two parables.
We're going to do two parables today that use different images to make
fundamental points about the Kingdom.
And so we begin with the kingdom is like leaven, the kingdom is like leaven.
So Matthew 13 verse 33 says, He spoke
another parable to them, "The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a
woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened".
And then in Luke Chapter 13 verse 20 and 21,
He writes, or Matthew writes, And again He said,
"To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, which a woman
took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened".
So pretty much the same parable here but given twice.
Let's start with a little bit of history, just about leaven. OK.
Levin was an important element in Jewish life because bread was a
main food item and also because leaven was used as a religious symbol as well.
Leaven was produced by mixing various
plants or kernels of grain together and allowing these to ferment.
In breadmaking leaven was usually a piece of dough that was leftover from a
previous batch of bread, left to ferment before adding flour.
Now the expression hidden in the flour simply means to add flour.
Nothing mysterious about that. And 3 pecks of meal was about a bushel,
fifty six pounds, which was a normal batch of bread and baked products
that was made at one time. So in the Old Testament
leaven was prohibited during the Feast of the Passover.
We read about that in Exodus 23, in Exodus 34.
Leaven represented decay and impurity. And so a special effort was made to avoid it
during special feasts and special offerings.
In the New Testament, Jesus used leaven as a symbol of
corrupting influences as seen in the hypocrisy of the Jewish leaders. Right?
In Matthew 16:6 and in other places he warns the disciples be careful of the leaven of the
Pharisees. Right? Meaning the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.
The New Testament writers also used leaven as a symbol for corruption
and evil influence as well. First Corinthians chapter five verse six, Paul
makes a reference to leaven as well. So the parable of the leaven
in the bread. So when Jesus gives this parable however, he doesn't use
leaven as a symbol for corruption as was done in the past.
He compares the kingdom to the simple and common task of making bread.
The leaven in the flour mixed together makes
the bread rise. It influences its growth.
It makes it change its look and taste and eventually prepares it for its
final purpose and that is, of course, to be eaten, to provide life. Pretty simple.
You don't have to figure that out. Just observe how leaven works and how bread is made.
Those are the conclusions that you come to. So this is the
simple and recognizable image. This simple and recognizable image is
placed alongside the kingdom and the reader is left to conclude that the
kingdom is like leaven. And the question is well how so?
Well the kingdom, in the world, is like leaven in the bread in the following ways:
The Kingdom begins as something that is sour and dead,
the cross of Christ, the humble death and baptism of every believer.
That's how the kingdom begins. Isn't it? And when added to the world the
kingdom influences the direction of the world and
the growth of the world. And it makes it change its look and taste and it prepares it
for its final purpose, which is the coming of the Son of God to judge. Well what does Jesus
say to his disciples? You're the salt. You're the light. Right?
You're the leaven.
So we have to understand no one parable teaches us everything
about the kingdom. Each parable gives us one or two pieces of
the puzzle. For example, the parable of the leaven gives
us specific pieces of information about the kingdom.
Which are the following: First, the Kingdom is something that changes and evolves.
We dwell in a kingdom which is in the process
of change, so we must be prepared to change and grow as well.
You add the leaven and the flour together there's going to be a change.
You come into the kingdom of God, you confess Christ, repent of your sins, you are
immersed in the waters of baptism, change has come, you're going to change.
All right. Another thing we learn about the kingdom, the kingdom
affects everything else. The kingdom is not isolated. It's not a monastery.
It's not a bubble in which we live excluding everyone who is not within.
The Kingdom affects everything around it. Everything that comes into contact
with it changes for the good, are converted,
become believers or for the bad. The kingdom
comes in contact with unbelief or evil, that unbelief and evil either,
changes to belief and goodness or it continues in its
disbelief and evil to its own destruction. But it's never the same,
never the same after that.
I remember working for a company many, many years ago,
I had just become a Christian at that time, and
the simple announcement, I was happy and I became a Christian, I was baptized last night.
I was telling my workmates that. They were like, what? What's that all about?
They couldn't explain, believe and be baptized, they didn't know the Bible or anything. They didn't know
anything about Christianity. OK? I mean they were Catholic.
But they didn't understand what my experience was.
And I can still remember to this day, not just a few days later, eating in the
company cafeteria, having my lunch and this and that and a bunch of the guys were there
and women, and they were passing around a men's magazine
with pictures and things like that. And they were passing it around and then it got to me.
The guy went to pass it to me and remembered what I had said to him and just said, yeah no
and he passed it to another guy over there. I didn't say anything. I didn't say
no, no I don't want to see that or anything like that. He just knew something had changed in my life.
And he knew intuitively that this thing that he wanted to share with me was not to
be shared with someone who just said I've become a Christian. I've become a disciple of Jesus.
A change, a very little tiny change that
I announced one day, made a change in his perception
of me and his perception of what he was doing. It dawned on him all of a sudden that
he was participating in something that someone else would refuse to
participate in. There was a line.
So the kingdom does that to people.
The Kingdom effects people positive or negative. But it always affects them.
Thirdly, the things that we learn about the kingdom from the parable of the leaven.
Thirdly, there'll be an end.
Just as the bread reaches its final stage and purpose, so does the kingdom.
Now other parables are left to give information about
what the end will be, what will happen.
This one, this parable here, simply states that there will be an end.
And that's it. So three things that we learn. And I'm not saying these are the
only things. I'm sure if we sat here and we talked and got some more ideas we could come up with some
other things. But certainly on the surface these are three things that we learn
about God's Kingdom, about the Kingdom that we inhabit, from the parable of the leaven.
All right. Let's go to another parable now in Matthew Chapter 13.
If you want to follow along your bible. The kingdom is like a dragnet.
Matthew 13, beginning in verse 47.
Jesus says, "Again the kingdom of heaven is like
a dragnet cast into the sea, and gathering fish of every kind;
and when it was filled, they drew it up on the beach; and they sat down and gathered the good
fish into containers, but the bad they threw away.
So it will be at the end of the age; the angels will come forth and take out the wicked from among
the righteous, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place
there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth".
Again. A simple image, a simple story.
Fishing was a main occupation of those times and commercial fishermen would use
large nets to harvest fish for selling at the market.
The dragnet that he's talking about here, the dragnet was the
largest of the nets. It was weighted down below so that it would sink to the bottom and it had corks
at the top to keep the top of the net on the surface of the water.
The dragnet covered about a half a mile of water space and it
kicked everything up in its path.
That's why they call it the dragnet. They dragged it and they caught everything,
picked everything up into this net.
Now, in the parable the net is full. It's taken to the shore
where the fishermen would begin separating the edible and salable fish from
the worthless fish. The edible would then
be placed in containers to keep fresh in order to go to the market and the unedible were simply
thrown away. Now the people of Jesus day, especially around Galilee,
had seen this thing happen their whole lives. He wasn't telling them a story like, if it was me,
I've never seen that happen.
I've never been close to a fishing boat but these people they grew up with this, they knew exactly
what he was talking about. In this parable Jesus goes
ahead and actually takes the comparison one step further to
reveal the similarities reflected in the spiritual realm. Remember
in the parable of the leaven, He just gives the parable but he doesn't give the application, how the
kingdom is like. But in this parable he gives the parable but he also gives the application to the
parable so it's much more valuable as far as information is concerned.
He reveals that this parable points to the end of the world
and the time of judgment. And since he said the kingdom is like a
net thrown out to catch fish, the judgment here
refers to the people who are in the kingdom, the
ones who have been taken in the net. That's very important.
Is he talking about all the fish in the sea? No. He's just talking about the fish that were
caught in the net. That's an important distinction to make. So he's saying the
kingdom of heaven is like what? Is like a dragnet that picks up a lot of fish.
So he's talking here about the people in the kingdom.
OK? We know that the net is the gospel,
which is cast out into the world and it brings in all kinds of fish,
all kinds of people into the kingdom. Jesus says that at the
end of the world the angels will separate the true disciples, those are the
good fish, from the false disciples, those are the bad fish.
Angels are the ones who will do this. And this is also
repeated in Matthew 25 verse 32. So it's important to understand
this is about the judgment for those who are in the kingdom. This is not about
those in the kingdom will be saved and those outside the kingdom will be lost.
This is all about, this is what will happen to the people in the kingdom.
So the parable on the kingdom teaches some very different lessons than the
one regarding the leaven. They don't contradict each other.
They simply complement each other by adding more detail.
OK, so what do we learn from the parable, concerning the dragnet?
Number one, all kinds of people are brought into the kingdom. We know now
that the Gospel is the means to draw all people into the kingdom and all
kinds of people come into the kingdom and not just culturally diverse,
not Asians or Africans or
Europeans or tall or short or male or female. Yeah, yeah of course, all kinds of
different people but also all kinds of different moral people,
with all kinds of different commitments, levels of faith,
degrees of understanding and commitment, different in those ways, as well.
Number two, there is good and bad in the kingdom.
There is good and bad in the kingdom. I hear people say all the time, well, I'm not going to that church
man they're hypocrites in that church.
No kidding. Is that like a newsflash to you?
I remember a young preacher that I was training back in Quebec,
and he had been working for several years and I was discipling and training him in
ministry and so on and so forth and one day he comes into my office and throws
he just himself down on the chair.
And I said, Look what's wrong? Well I'm so fed up.
What are you fed up about? Well, let's just say brother Joe. Okay?
Well brother Joe, here I was working with him and this and that and I thought for sure we were going strong,
he had stopped drinking and he was flying right. He was looking for a
job and it was great and then I just found out he got arrested for drunken driving.
And I'm so fed up. And I said OK, wait, wait, let me get let me get this straight.
You, a minister, you're fed up with sin?
Yeah that's it. I'm fed up with sin.
Sin is what we do.
Sin is what we deal with all the time.
You think there's just sin out with the nonbelievers?
There's sin inside the church. As a matter of fact we have a billboard
going up here on 23rd, that's going to say "SINNERS
are welcome at the Church of Christ",
24 foot across 12 feet high, "SINNERS are welcome",
and then it says at the Choctaw Church of Christ.
Some say, well I mean I never.
Well that's all we have is sinners. We don't have anything else but sinners in the church;
Redeemed sinners, forgiven sinners, sinners who are struggling with their sins,
but sinners nevertheless.
And so this parable confirms the idea that
all people in the kingdom are sinners,
some are working on that,
asking God to help them with their sins,
asking the Spirit of God to diminish the power of sin in their lives
so that they can get the upper hand, dealing with their
sinful flesh and their failures, they're working at it and other people yeah, they don't care.
They're actually using the Church or the kingdom as camouflage
for their sinful activities.
And I've been in very, very large churches where some people become members of the church just so that
they can, I don't know, sell insurance or something.
Please don't get me wrong here, anybody watching out there, here, I don't mean to offend someone
who earns their living by selling insurance, that's a perfectly noble career.
But you understand what I'm saying.
They're in the pew but they're not in the spirit.
And so this parable here reveals that idea,
removes the naive thought that... you've got five hundred people in the church,
members in your particular congregation, every one of those five hundred people are sincere
and doing their best. No. Of course not.
Jesus teaches that all kinds of people find their way into the kingdom for a while.
The net brings everybody in.
The requirements to be a member of the church allow even insincere
or evil people to be included if they want to.
Because we don't read a person's heart. We just take them at their word. Right?
I mean you go to the bank for money. They want information. They want your social security number,
they want a deposit, they want to make sure, they ask a lot of questions before they release some cash.
In the church, what's the only question we ask?
Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God?
Yes I do. Based on that confession I now bury you in the water baptism.
Welcome brother, welcome sister.
We ought not to be surprised or discouraged even, when we see or
suspect that somebody who names the name of Christ but not acting like a Christian.
With this parable here Jesus said yeah that going to happen.
Don't be shocked. Don't be discouraged. Don't be disillusioned.
So we learned that from the Parable of the Dragnet. A third thing we learned,
the kingdom however, will be purified.
When Jesus returns not only sinners and disbelievers will be judged,
God, through His angels, will remove all those from the church who do not belong there.
We can fool society and we can fool the brethren and we can even fool ourselves but we can't fool God.
That's why we shouldn't judge.
God knows who the true disciples, the true Christians are and
he will keep only these in the end.
Sounds a little harsh doesn't it? Well yes, it would be extremely
harsh and hypocritical, if a man or a woman in the church
decided to take that position and say you belong, you don't belong, you belong, you don't belong.
That's not man's job. That's not our task. Our task is to
love our brothers and love our sisters and give them the benefit of the doubt. And if something they actually do
is wrong then we need to call them on it, in love. And we need to help them
deal with that issue whatever that is.
Of course this is a warning to everybody at various levels.
For example, for those who are not in the kingdom,
Jesus spoke this parable, not to the disciples, but to the crowd
who came to hear him speak.
So their idea is whoa,
you're in the net or you're not. We're in the kingdom or we're not.
Jesus made it clear to all that there was to be a dividing line between those who were
in and those who were out. In today's society keywords, what are the key words?
Well inclusiveness, tolerance, those are the key words.
We even give two men or two women the full privileges of marriage even though five
thousand plus years of world history has reserved this
only for heterosexuals, even though every single religion in the world condemns it,
even though homosexuals can't do the one thing that civil marriages were
designed to protect, and that is the production of children, the one thing,
cannot be achieved with that kind of union.
And yet in our society we give them the same blessing and rights in
law because we want to include everybody into everything and we
do not want to be seen as being intolerant of anyone.
Christianity is also inclusive and tolerant.
I always hear, the number one knock against Christianity by those who are not Christians; Oh you people are
so judgmental. You think you're the only ones.
Well no. Christianity is inclusive and tolerant. Anyone can become a
Christian and all Christians are to be patient and loving even
in the face of each other's weaknesses.
But Christianity has boundaries and the
boundaries are set by God not by men. I know that in the church and in Christianity a lot of,
when I say men I mean people, I know that within Christianity there are a lot of people that like to stand
up and themselves establish where the boundaries are. But in reality only God is allowed
to establish the boundaries not men. We have to uphold them
but we don't establish.
So one of the basic boundaries of Christianity is well, the Gospel itself.
If you believe and you respond to the Gospel in faith you're in the kingdom.
Mark 16:16, those who believe and are baptized, they'll be saved.
On the other hand, if you disbelieve and you refuse to respond well
then you're not in the kingdom. Nobody arm wrestles you or
tackles you and drags you into the kingdom of God. You have to want to come in and
you come in based on the requirements established by God.
This is not intolerance, it's not bigotry. This is God's boundary.
And those who follow him also hold to the boundary that he has established.
I can be friends, I can be friends with an atheist. I can.
We can go golf together, you know I like to play golf, we can go golfing together, we can go out and eat together.
The atheists can come to my house with his family.
We can share and even play a game, I don't know, Monopoly.
I can do all that with an atheist but there's
one thing I cannot do with an atheist. I can't have fellowship with an atheist.
I can be his friend but I can't be his brother. That's a difference.
I'm not the one that made that boundary. God made that boundary.
So Jesus demonstrates the idea of boundary
in this parable, some are in the net and others are not.
So it's possible to be left out if we so choose.
Another warning, to those in the kingdom this time.
To those in the kingdom, but in name only,
in other words I'm a Christian, I'm a fish in the net but I'm not in the spirit.
I'm a Christian but I bear no fruit.
I'm one of those non edible fish.
To these, Jesus warns that they will not escape judgment.
Some people think they can hide out in the church, they can have just enough
religion to keep them saved while still enjoying the world.
This parable warns that these will, there will be a
sorting out within the kingdom as well, in order to clean out the hypocrites and the deadwood.
So Jesus wants to offer God a living church, a kingdom
a live in Christ when he comes. So those who are really of this world and just faking
their Christianity will be removed.
They'll be removed. It's not up to us to decide.
I hate seeing that among Christians deciding who's in, who's..
That's not our job to decide who's in who's out.
Oh you people you don't do things exactly like we do then you're out.
Who gave you that right.
We don't have that right.
The only right we have is to love. We have a right to try to love everyone.
I'm not saying we tolerate sin in the church. No.
There are passages that explain to us what we do, what we're supposed to do if we see a brother or sister
who has sinned or who has offended us, of course.
But to sit there and decide they're in and they're out, there in ...
Jesus assures us don't worry,
in the end I know who are the ones who are in and I know who are out
and judgment will be made at the proper time.
As far as you're concerned, you and me, go preach the gospel just throw the
dragnet out bring the fish in.
Finally a word of encouragement. So there's two warnings but there's a word of encouragement too.
To the true citizens of the kingdom, for those who know Christ,
for those who obey Christ, for those who trust completely in him and
who are faithful to the kingdom and growing in the kingdom,
there is the promise of a better place.
They will be kept for rooms in the mansions of the Father.
There's a great promise to those who manage to remain faithful.
And part of remaining faithful is
simply obeying Christ and allowing God to do what he does
and doing what he's given us to do.
We have things to do in the kingdom.
And the major thing we are supposed to do, we're supposed to proclaim the kingdom.
Get out there and proclaim the kingdom. Be the salt, be the light.
Leave the judging to God. Take that burden off of our hearts.
The only judgment that we need to make on ourselves,
our actions, examine ourselves.
Paul says in First Corinthians, examine yourself. He didn't say examine the brother he said examine yourself.
If you do that, that's what gives and promotes a healthy spiritual life.
So we're going to stop at those two parables for today and keep on going.
And that's what I'm going to be doing for the rest of the course here. We're just going to take these parables
stripped them down, try to find things and then maybe near the end try to put together all the
things we've learned, hopefully be able to create a more accurate image of this thing called the
Spiritual Kingdom of God. Thank you very much for your attention.