Father in Heaven, thank you Lord for giving us your Holy Word to guide and develop our walk in and with you. Lord we simply ask that you to grow us to act justly, love mercy, and to walk humbly with you. Father, please forgive us our many sins as we learn to do the same for others. In your heavenly name Father, we pray, Amen!
Today’s focus is on reflecting on what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. We don’t know first-hand, and yet our Lord gives us thought after thought, through instruction on what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. The Prelude will start off our study by beginning with Matthew 13:31-35
31 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”
33 He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. 35 So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet:
“I will open my mouth in parables,
I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.”
We just kicked off today’s look at the Lord’s teaching thru parable, by looking at the mustard seed in soil, and yeast in flour. Like the kingdom of Heaven both can grow exponentially, which is a fancy way of saying that the kingdom of Heaven can rock you like a hurricane! Or, when God is in action, big things can and will happen through faith.
Like yeast in dough, and seed to root, God’s kingdom will go forth, hopefully with you choosing to be a part of something bigger than any one of us alone. Now more instruction with today’s Message Reading; Matthew 13:44-52,
44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.
47 “Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. 48 When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. 49 This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous 50 and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
51 “Have you understood all these things?” Jesus asked. “Yes,” they replied.
52 He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.”
Message: Parables Sharable, & Growth from Both
Even though Jesus has used metaphors (figures of speech that speak symbolically to us), chapter 13 of Matthew begins the use of parables. The word parable itself in Greek means: “something to cast beside” or something else to explain, like a comparison or an analogy.
What was and is so revolutionary about the Lord using parables to teach by was that He was doing something new. The Jewish religious teachers (rabbis) didn’t start using parables to teach until later and focused on the Torah (the first five books of the Bible), and Jesus did not. Time after time, our Lord will instruct by secular story parables that make us think about the Kingdom of God, or what God is doing in our world now, and in the future.
In other words, Jesus uses worldly stories that we can connect to, in order to shepherd us into the kingdom of Heaven. A “modern-day” teacher would say that: He is taking us from the known in our lives into the new unknown world that awaits our entry.
My thought, and that’s all it is (you have the heavy burden of praying, studying, and thinking for yourself with the Lord as your compass), our Lord continuously instructs us not to dwell on the past but gives us hope in the moment and into our futures in and with Him.
The Apostle Paul would speak of this hope and more in his letter to the Church in Rome two thousand years ago. Reading from Romans 8:24-39;
24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
*Interrupting Paul to say; our God not only instructs humanity face to face in the earthly ministry of Jesus, our God’s Holy Spirit continues to instruct, guide, and sustain us through the Word of God (scripture), but the very promptings of His will, through His Spirit.
The next verse provides mountains of comfort in just a few words. Verse 28;
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
**If you are struggling; step back, breath and know that He is with you. Active and robust in the world that He created. More now from Paul at verse 29;
29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
***Cutting in to say; Again my thought and people’s ideas on this varies, our God wants all of His creation to come to Him. Humanity has been made in the image of God, its time the human race begins to act like it. When we finally begin to realize our place with our Lord, we find that ; we are More Than Conquerors in Him. Verse 31;
31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
****Psalm 44:22; is quoted to show that suffering is a reality and always has been for the people of God. Picking up now at, Verse 37;
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And perhaps that is why our Lord instructed the Kingdom of God in the present and the future through parables. To not only focus us on the hope of the future, but how we should go about out thinking and processing what is important to us through the lens of what is doable, essential, and predictable in our Lord.
Reminding me of the words of David in a psalm of assent. A hymn that would have been sung by the congregation of all of Israel as they were walking (ascending) up to the House of the Lord (the Temple) to praise, glorify, and magnify God’s Holy and Precious Name. Reading again today’s Call to Worship; Psalm 131
1 My heart is not proud, Lord,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
2 But I have calmed and quieted myself,
I am like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child I am content.
3 Israel, put your hope in the Lord
both now and forevermore.
Now that is not a metaphor, allegory, or parable, but the picture of the nation of Israel ascending to God’s house as one congregation, a family, is a vision that sticks to me like a parable. Putting hope in our Lord as King David describes in Psalms, and Paul instructs in his Roman letter, are essential. Hope for understanding, leads us to revisit our Lord’s instruction in Parables. Of what the Kingdom of Heaven is like, now and in the future.
With that, lets revisit and look again at the parables in Matthew 13. Specifically let’s relook at our parabolic instruction from the Lord with today’s Message Reading from Matthew 13:44-52;
44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.
47 “Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. 48 When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. 49 This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous 50 and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
51 “Have you understood all these things?” Jesus asked. “Yes,” they replied.
**Please let me cut in to say; every time the disciples say they get it, it make me wonder and think yea but…Chapter 13 of Matthew has up to this point provided 7 parables for our growth and food to think on:
Parables;
#1; The Sower and,
#2; The Weeds, both we reviewed at last week, both teaching how sin was brought into the world by the devil, and how God would visit His justice into the world in the future. Separating the saved from the condemned, and doing a massive cleanup on humanity’s mess on isle 9.
Today we have looked at:
Parables 3-8, with #3, and #4; The mustard seed in soil, and yeast in flour. Both like the Kingdom of God persistent and growing.
#5, and #6; The Hidden Treasure, and the Perl of Great Worth, representing what a person will do to gain access, be a part of, and enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Once clarity, reality, and understanding have visited the mind of a person (thanks be to God), that person will do anything to enter the Kingdom of Heaven to be with God.
#7; The Net, where the fishermen represent the angels of God in the future separating the good and the bad, or the saved from the condemned. Again, showing us that God will make right all the horrible things that exists in this fallen world.
Many Bible Scholars have instructed that there are seven parables in this block of teaching in chapter 13, but I agree with Eugene Boring’s assessment in his commentary of Matthew, in the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary. Boring states that this last passage (that I am about to read) is a parable to describe the other seven parables. Verse 52;
52 He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.”
Both treasures found, and salvation from judgement in humanity’s future, have been given by a God who loves us in spite of us. The disciples who have been given the ability to comprehend the new treasures of the Gospel bring even greater insight to the treasures of our God, demonstrated in the Old Testament.
Make no mistake about it, predestination language is found throughout all of today’s instruction from Romans to the parables in Matthew’s Gospel. My thought is that when we begin to understand that we belong to a God who always has been and will forever be in control, and over all of everything… things begin to fall into place.
For me the theme of: Parables Sharable, & Growth from Both, is a language with an external theme. Of a God who has all planned out and wants a relationship with all of humanity. Even if you don’t understand all of what God is doing, just knowing He has a plan fosters trust.
Additionally, knowing that our God has planned, known, and created the reality in which we live in, is obvious. Knowing that, keeps you and me humble in knowing that we are not the authors of our salvation. God is! Yet we are responsible for taking the call from our Lord serious, and then plunging into a new life in and with our Lord. That is what free choice is all about.
When you and I accept the invitation God is offering to all of humanity (the elect), something happens that is unique and one of a kind. A relationship is established that is brand new, special, and exceptional to you alone. This is happening while at the same time multitudes of other people are experiencing their unique relationship in our Lord. Together we make up the Body of Christ. Stuff God planned before the beginning of time and yet He gives you free choice, to take the offer or not. Choose Him, and live!
If this is all beginning to overwhelm you. Take heart my friend for countless people have taken this trek before you and have found comfort in these words of the Psalmist. Reading Psalm 46;
1 God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
5 God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
6 Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
7 The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
8 Come and see what the Lord has done,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
9 He makes wars cease
to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
10 He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
11 The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Yes, be still and know He is God, and if God is for us, who can be against us? The only thing that can separate you from Him, is you, in your own fallen self. Choose Him, and live!
Simply put, your God has given all for your eternal life in and with Him. He expects you; to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8) May that walk lead you to: Love God with all of your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. (Matt 22:37-40)
When you ask the Lord to help you in this walk with Him, He will visit His grace upon you. Have faith! Choose Him, and live! Knock and the door will be opened. In fact, let me close with a quote from our Lord, again in the Gospel Matthew this time Matthew 7:7-8;
7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
Amen!
Benediction; Romans 8:38-39, and Numbers 6:24-26,
38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
and
24 “‘“The Lord bless you
and keep you;
25 the Lord make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
26 the Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”’