Kingdom Parables
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2013 · 23 June 2013
Matthew 13 is one of the greatest chapters in all of the pages of Holy Scripture. We are all striving to understand Christianity in our time and how to make the church what God wants it to be. But all efforts to understand the church age, the period we live in, must begin at Matthew 13 in the New Testament.
Here is the analysis of the church age from the viewpoint of Jesus Christ Himself. This is the biblical presentation of the church and our Lord discusses the nature, the qualities of this period of time that we know as the church age. It is a marvelously prophetic chapter. The Lord talks about things that are going to come to pass. And so, it is tremendously important for us to understand the nature of this age.
Now, remember that Matthew has presented Jesus Christ as King. He has shown us that Jesus is the anointed of God, the Messiah, the Christ, and the Savior of the world. He has come to bring His kingdom. Jesus did what John the Baptist said he would, He offered a kingdom. And He called people to acknowledge Him as the King.
However, by the time we 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. And so, as we come to chapter 13, the kingdom is postponed to a future time, a time when the people of Israel will accept the King, will acknowledge His kingdom and receive it in its fullness.
The time between this rejection and His return is a time that is called the mystery form of the kingdom, because it is a time hidden from generations past. In Matthew 13:11, “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.” Jesus calls it the mystery. No one knows the details of this period of time until Matthew 13 and Jesus gives us where it all begins.
Now, to look at how the Old Testament sees this mystery period, turn first to Zechariah 12:10- 11, "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 mourns for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. 11 In that day shall there be a great mourning."
There's going to come a day when the people of Israel will look upon the One they pierced, and that means the crucifixion of Jesus, and they will mourn greatly. And they will be bitter that they ever did that. Now that tells us that when the King came, He would be rejected and He would be crucified.
Psalm 22 tells us the same thing. Isaiah 53 again tells us the same thing. There would be a piercing; there would be a rejection and crucifixion. But later there would be mourning over that. But Zechariah, the Psalmist and Isaiah say nothing about the time in between these things. When the mourning comes though, Zechariah 13:1 says, "In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness."
Zechariah 14: 4, "And His feet shall 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 mountain shall remove toward the north and half toward the south."
This is the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, splitting open 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." So Zechariah saw the rejection and the piercing and even a resurrection, and after that mourning and then a salvation of the people of God, and then the establishment of the kingdom.
Now, let's go back to Matthew 13 with that in mind. Can you imagine how important it is that Matthew 13 be where it is? If the kingdom is postponed until a future time, when the people of the King will receive the King and the kingdom will then come, what happens in the meantime? Matthew 13:10, “And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”
And that is precisely the question answered by the series of parables in Matthew 13. Each parable describes a particular facet of this period in which we now live known as the mystery form of the kingdom. 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 His church out, as it began when He called the church into being.
Now, as we begin to look at Matthew 13, let me give you this evening just a general overview and a sense of what our Lord is teaching here. Three points that I want you to note: the plan, the purpose and the promise. 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."
There was an important reason that Jesus spoke in parables as we shall see in our second point. But let's discuss that plan first. All of the parables here in this chapter were spoken at one time. On this very occasion, the very day that Jesus left the house and went to the seashore and the multitude gathered and when He went out offshore in a little boat He gave these parables.
Now, He only spoke those things in parables. It says in Matthew 13:34, "All these things Jesus spoke to the multitude in parables; and without a parable He did not speak to them.” Listen carefully, He did not explain the parables to the multitudes, He only spoke to them in parables.
So what is a parable? It really means laying something along side something else so that a comparison can be made. That's basically what it means, a comparison or an illustration. There is a spiritual truth that may be hard to understand, so we lay along side of it a physical, earthly story which gives you a better understanding of that spiritual truth.
So Jesus teaches spiritual lessons about a period of time no one knew about. And He does it in a simple way so that the people can understand the story very easily. He uses a field and 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 leaven and a treasure and a pearl. Those are all things those people understood.
And all throughout Jesus’ teaching prior to this, recorded in Matthew, He gave them graphic analogies. For example, men were to be in the world like salt and light. That's teaching by analogy. In Matthew 7 He talked about a wise builder and a foolish builder. He talked about a foundation of sand and a foundation of rock. Jesus explains in pictures, but now our Lord extents that into a full story with many parts in which He conveys spiritual truth.
Now, parables are effective because, first, they make truth clear. Most people think in pictures and 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 easier to understand.
Secondly, they make truth memorable. 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 passed on to others. Thirdly, they make truth interesting. They change it from rather dull spiritual thoughts down to life situations that grab our interest and can be applied.
And fourthly, they make truth personally discoverable. In other words, as the story goes, you begin to understand that spiritual truth and see it in the story so that you internalize that truth yourself. So, parables are a marvelous mode of teaching and thus our Lord spoke in parables as the Hebrews commonly did.
Now, as we begin to look at the chapter, we see a sequence of parables. But while parables explain things and parables help us understand things, they help only when they are explained to us, an unexplained parable is nothing but a riddle. And that is why Jesus had to explain everything, even to His own disciples.
In Mark 4:11, “And He said to them, “To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables.” Jesus only explained the parables to the twelve and those who believed, not to the rest. So that tells us about the purpose of parables, they are to reveal and they are also to conceal. To believers they make truth clear, to unbelievers they make truth even more unclear.
Look at Matthew 13:12, “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.” Whoever is born again, whoever has received the King and believes in the King, whoever has accepted God's truth will get more of God's truth. That is enlightenment and that is illumination.
Do you remember the parable of the talents of our Lord in Matthew 25:28-29 where you find the evil servant and the Lord says, “Therefore take the talent from him, and give it to him who has ten talents. 29 ‘For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.” To those who live up to the light of Christ, He will give more light. But whoever does not believe God, "from him shall be taken even what he has."
What does that mean? Well, there may have been a little bit of understanding as Jesus taught and preached and performed miracle after miracle. They had seen the signs of the Holy Spirit. They had seen wonders. But when they said no to the King, even what they had they lost. None of it made anymore sense and they began to descent into deeper darkness all the time.
We see that today. Nobody in our society is more disoriented than the Jewish people. They had everything. But as soon as they rejected the King, the light went out; they began to lose the meaning of everything they had. Judaism has moved from orthodoxy to what is called Conservative Judaism and now to reformed Judaism where they don't even believe the Bible as the Word of God.
All men, now listen carefully; are in process, either they go up or they go down. That's a fearful thing. No man stays static, the longer you know Jesus Christ, the more faithful He is to reveal His truth and the stronger you grow. The longer you refuse Jesus Christ, the more you slide on that slippery slope, and the deeper the pit of darkness becomes.
Verse 13, Jesus says, “Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.” Because they will not hear with understanding, I will now speak to them so they cannot understand. Man says no, so God says no as well. God confirms men in their own stubbornness; God binds them by their own chain. And for them the parables become interesting stories but they really don't know what the point is.
And then comes this marvelous statement in verses 14 and 15, “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.’”
This was no surprise to God that they rejected the King. They fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 6: 9-10. You know when Isaiah wrote that? He wrote that at a time of judgment on Israel. He just pronounced a series of curses for all of their drunkenness, debauchery, their immorality, their bribery and their oppression of the poor. He cursed them for their hypocritical religion. And then, at the height of all of that King Uzziah died and the country plunged into dark days of judgment.
And it wasn't long after that, Jeremiah echoed the message of Isaiah and the great hordes came and swept away the people into Babylonian captivity. That was the first fulfillment of Isaiah's words and Jesus gives here's the second message. So, these parables are words of judgment of unbelief on those people. And the fact that we, who love Jesus Christ, understand the Bible is not a statement about our intellect; it is a statement about God's gracious illumination of our hearts and minds.
And do you want to see what the third step was? Look at 1 Corinthians 14:21-22, quoting Isaiah 28, another judgment by Isaiah on Israel, ‘In the law it is written: with men of other tongues, (or languages,) and other lips I will speak to this people, and yet for all that will they not hear Me, says the Lord. 22 Therefore tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers.”
People often ask me, what are tongues for? It says right there, they are a sign, not for those who believe, but for those who do not believe. Where was tongues primarily used? On the day of Pentecost, for the Israelites. Why? They wouldn't listen when Jesus spoke to them clearly in their own language, so He judged them by speaking to them in a language they didn't know. You see the progression of judgment? Tongues are a sign of judgment upon Israel.
Now, we've seen what is concealed, let's look now at what is revealed in verse 16, "But blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear." Isn't that great? On the other side we are given the understanding of the parables. Because Jesus explained them and we have the New Testament text and also because the Holy Spirit is our teacher. That's the illumination.
That is why the Psalmist in Psalm 119:18 cries out, "Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things out of Thy law." That's the heart of Isaiah in 64:1 when he says, "O God, rend the heavens and come down." I've got to have an explanation of what He's saying.
But verse 17 says, “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.” Peter says, they were looking into their own prophecies and searching what person and what time these things would come to pass.
Oh how wonderful it is that we now have the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. Even for the saved ones there has to be divine illumination. There has to be the discipline of study so there will be illumination by the Holy Spirit. Jesus isn't here to explain HIs Word, but He did send the Holy Spirit who will lead us into all truth.
Let's look at the promise in verse 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.” Do you know who said that? Asaph in 1 Chronicles 29:30 and that is what he said also in Psalm 78:2. Asaph predicted that the Messiah would speak in parables as an act of judgment.
God didn't adjust, before the foundation of the world He knew they would reject and He knew He'd have to put that mystery period in there. Everything is on schedule. God is not making alterations as time goes. He's sovereign. Well, I hope that gets you excited for the remaining messages of Matthew 13.