img01

 

 

FOREWORD

 

 

The Parables of the New Testament are here treated historically. It is insufficient to extract from each separately its own particular lesson or lessons.  The public career of our Lord was marked by progress in both its events and His teaching.  The instruction He imparted presents two governing features.  First, He taught according to the capacity of the hearers.  As they grasped the instruction further truth was unfolded.  Second, as opposition developed in intensity so did His parables in force and solemnity.

 

 

Each parable therefore reflects the conditions which called it forth and is illuminated by the circumstances.  In consequence they must be studied consecutively if the full sense and force of each is to be realized.  This applies to the parables in the Epistles also.

 

 

The purpose of the parables was intensely practical: so is this exposition of them.  What was then addressed to disciples is here applied to disciples, both comfort and reproof.  The warnings are neither shirked nor softened, yet the truth of the everlasting security of the regenerate is firmly maintained.

 

 

The spiritually susceptible student will thus find his mind and heart being led ever forward in the knowledge of the mind of God.  The kingdom of God will be opened to his gaze in its present reality and coming triumph, and the place of the Son of God in that kingdom will be the dominant single feature.  This was the character of our Lord’s ministry: it became that of Paul (Acts 28: 30, 31): it will be well if it more and more marks the preaching of these days.  May the [Holy] Spirit use these Studies unto this end, graciously correcting what is wrong and supplying what is lacking.

 

 

By the favour of the Lord and the fellowship of His servants, this book is issued at considerably below its economic price, in order to make it more readily available to those who desire to obtain it.

 

 

                                                                                                                            G. H. LANG.

 

 

*       *       *

 

PRELIMINARY NOTE

ON SYMBOLICAL AND LITERAL LANGUAGE

 

 

To employ figurative speech is a native characteristic of the human mind.  It is more marked in some minds than in others, and in some races than in others.  The Oriental is very prone to it, the Westerner to-day less and less so, a result perhaps of the mechanical and mathematical habit of mind induced by modem industry and science.  It is a regrettable loss, and especially it disables the Westerner from penetrating easily into the deeper and higher truths taught in the Bible, this Book being pre-eminently Oriental in style and tone, and beautiful by reason of its richness in figurative language.  It is highly needful that the Western mind should immerse itself in the Bible manner of speech, and endeavour resolutely to form the habit of thinking pictorially.  The Book of Proverbs greatly aids this and the book of the Revelation demands it, as does our present subject.

 

 

A statement may be strictly literal, yet may be made not at all to set out the literal fact stated, but because of some unmentioned fact or truth which corresponds to the one stated and which the reader is to discover by reflection (e.g. Eccles. 10: 8).  Neither rigid literalism nor liberal spiritualizing conforms to the persistent feature of language to interweave the figurative and the literal.

 

 

Of this latter feature a converted Moslem gave a good example.  He was interpreting into Arabic what I was saying to another Moslem.  After the way of life had been made plain I asked him to say that now it was for the other to believe upon the Son of God and be saved or to reject Him and be lost.  There was no alternative.  We were at the top of a four-storey dwelling.  He spoke for a few minutes and then he said to me: I have told him there are two ways of getting out of this house; he can go down the staircase or throw himself out of the window: it must be one or the other.  His statement was literal as to fact, figurative in sense.

 

 

Ecclesiastes 10: 8 is a good Old Testament example: “Whoso breaketh through a fence a serpent shall bite him  In hot and sandy places in the East this is so well known that the wise man could scarcely need to state it.  “Tell not as new what everybody knows He must have mentioned it for the sake of some un-stated lesson; that is, the statement is literal, but there being a hidden lesson it is figurative in sense.  “Thou shalt not eat of it” was a fence around the tree in Eden: in the very act of breaking through it by disobeying, Adam and Eve were instantly infected with the moral virus of the ancient Serpent, his fatal principle of rebellion.

 

 

It is also to be observed that the figure hyperbole (over-statement) is used to emphasize an idea.

 

 

No rigid uniform rule can be laid down to govern interpretation.  Doubtless it is safer to incline rather to a literal than to a figurative sense, but always with the large reserve and latitude that human speech is a blend of direct and symbolic language.  And for the right comprehension of Holy Scripture the devout have the special advantage of the [Holy] Spirit, Who inspired the Book, being with them to open the mind to its meaning; yet ever remembering that the thoughts of His infinite mind were caused to pass through human minds and to find expression in modes of utterance native to that vehicle.*

 

* The above is abridged from Preliminary Dissertation I of my treatise The Revelation of Jesus Christ.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

MYSTERIES OF THE KINGDOM

 

 

Matt. 13; Mark 4; Luke 8: 4-15.

 

 

 

It signifies much that at this juncture Jesus addresses the Father as “Lord of heaven and earth” (Matt. 11: 25).* The Son was in this world to reassert the sovereign rights of God.  Those rights had been denied, by angels in heaven, by angels and men on earth.  Christ maintained those rights, in the first place by doing as man the whole will of God.  Then as Teacher He called others to repent of their sin in not having lived as loyal subjects of the Lord of heaven and earth, and He taught them that, through His coming and atoning death, sin could be forgiven and they themselves receive from the God they had defied the free gift of a share in His eternal life, the life that is the animating energy of His eternal kingdom (John 3: 14-16; 6: 40, 51-58; 10: 10-18, 27, 28; 12: 32; Matt. 26: 28).

 

* The title Lord is frequently applied to the Father.  By Christ (Matt. 4: 7, 10; 9: 38; 11: 25; Luke 4: 18, 19); by men (Acts 4: 26; 17: 24; 2 Cor. 6: 18; 1 Tim. 1: 14); by heavenly beings (Rev. 4: 8, 11; 11: 15, 17; 15: 3, 4; 16: 7; 19: 6; 21: 21).

 

 

The holy angels act by the impulse of a divine principle and energy, the doing of the will of God (Ps. 103: 20); and when in due time this will shall prevail on earth as it does in heaven then will God’s kingdom have come fully to this earth.*

 

[* NOTE.  Bold type and underlining is not found in the author’s writings.  I have used these means to emphasise, what I believe, are very important scriptural truths. - Ed.]

 

 

In the meanwhile, during the present age, those who thus repent and are born of God are “rescued out of the sphere of authority of darkness, and are translated into the kingdom of the Son of God’s love” (Col. 1: 13).  Thus they are rescued from the Evil One (Matt. 6: 13), who keeps his subjects in the dark about all things divine and eternal, and they are become subjects in the kingdom of light, where God imparts knowledge of the great realities of heaven and earth, of time and eternity.

 

 

This aspect of matters Christ will open up later by explaining that He is the light; and now, at the crisis and juncture reached, He will diffuse light by outlining the phases through which the kingdom of God and heaven must pass in its development on earth on to its coming establishment on [this] earth in power and visible glory.

 

 

It is to be observed that the theme is the kingdom, not the church, even though the parables cover the age during which [obedient members of] the church is being called out.*  The church is a “palace - temple” for the dwelling of God (Eph. 2: 20-22), a “city” to be the capital of His kingdom, a “bride” to be the wife of the Lamb (Rev. 21: 9, 10); but a palace or a city or a queen is not the whole kingdom, but only a small part of it, even though the most honourable part.  It is the widest present aspect of the kingdom on earth that is set forth here; phases that will accompany the demand of the gospel that men shall render to God the honour due to Him as the Sovereign, the Lord of heaven and earth.  The various responses to that message are depicted.  The vast masses of mankind who would never hear the message are not part of the picture, not having come under the influence of the kingdom of God; but wherever the message comes the effects will be as now indicated.  Those hearers who bow to the authority of the King become members of His kingdom though as yet it is not a visible community or State on earth.

 

[* Acts 5: 32; Rev. 19: 7, 8. cf. Matt 7: 21; Phil. 3: 11; Rev. 2: 26, 27; 3: 21, 22; Lk. 20: 35.]

 

 

It is necessary to observe three general features of the parables by which this instruction is given.

 

 

First, the comparison of the kingdom of heaven is not to any one or other of the details of the picture drawn but to the whole picture.  It is not the sower, or the seed, or the soil separately that forms the comparison, but all in combination.  The kingdom of heaven is not likened to the leaven, or the woman, or the meal separately but to the combined action of the three.

 

 

Second, that the first parable is given by the Lord as a picture of His own activity as a Teacher, so that the series commences at the time of Christ.  But the final parable is of the judgment that will close this [evil] era at “the consummation of the age” (Matt. 13: 49).  Evidently therefore the parables cover the whole age.

 

 

Third, that once any given phase has set in it will persist until the age closes, so that at the consummation the kingdom of God will present all the phases of all the parables.  Thus the tares continue in the field until that consummation, when “the Son of man shall send forth His angels” for judgment or salvation (Matt. 13: 40, 41).

 

 

The First Parable: THE SOWER

 

Matt. 13: 3-9, 18-23; Mark 4: 2-20; Luke 8: 4-8

 

 

In the first place the kingdom will be as when a sower goes forth to sow.

 

 

1. The Sower (Matt. 13: 37) is the Son of man.  The particular aspect of the kingdom of God here in view commenced with His public ministry.  John had prepared the way for the work which Jesus carried forward. But the work did not end with the departure of Christ from the earth.  By the agency of His Spirit He has ever since carried it on through His servants in whom He acts by His Spirit.  What He did and taught when here in the flesh was a beginning only (Acts 1: 1); and when His followers went forth and preached He was still with them (Matt. 28: 20), working with them and confirming the word (Mark 16: 20); and thus it could be said to Gentiles who had never heard the Lord that “He came and preached peace* to you that were far off” (Eph. 2: 17).

 

[* NOTE.  There will be no lasting ‘peace’ throughout this earth until the ‘Prince of peace’ returns to establish his Messianic Kingdom here.]

 

 

Be the preacher never so active he will labour in vain unless he can say with Paul “Christ speaketh in me” (2 Cor. 13: 3); for that which Christ said is true of necessity in the kingdom of God, “apart from Me ye can do nothing” (John 15: 5).  Therefore must we, by the obedience of love, abide in heart fellowship with Him, or we shall labour to no eternal purpose, even should we seem to influence thousands.  In all times and all places the Son of man is the true Sower.

 

 

2. The Sowing.  The field is the heart of man, so the seed is to be cast everywhere: “Go ye, therefore, and make disciples [from among] all nations” (Matt. 28: 19).

 

 

Our work is the sowing of seed: the imparting of [divine] knowledge, that is, the facts concerning God, His Son, His kingdom, so instilling truth into the mind of man.   Only such means as secure this end are legitimate or suitable.  “The grace of God hath appeared ... instructing us” (Titus 2: 11, 12).  The overseer of a church must be “apt to teach” (1 Tim. 3: 2).  If I do not get some item of divine knowledge into the mind of the other I have done nothing worth while.  But the planting of the tiniest seed of truth may result in eternal fruit.  Paul regarded his whole ministry as a sowing of spiritual things (1 Cor. 9: 11).  The wise preacher will himself ponder his message so as to understand it, and he will seek for acceptance suitable words by which to make the message clear (Eccl. 12: 9, 10).

 

 

3. ‘The Seed is the word of God’ (Luke 8: 11), ‘the message about the kingdom’ (Matt. 13: 19, [N.I.V.]).  All too many preachers limit themselves to that part of the message which announces the forgiveness of sins and the new birth.  Others get little further than the inculcating of moral duties.  But John preached the kingdom, so did Jesus, so did Paul.  For Paul, to “testify the grace of God” was equivalent to “preaching the kingdom” (Acts 20: 24, 25).  Luke summarizes the apostle’s ministry of two years in Rome as “preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 28: 31).  His [main] theme was the [coming millennial] kingdom of God* and the position therein of the Lord Jesus Christ.  This is the same as preaching that “Jesus Christ is LORD,” that is, the appointed King over God’s entire [creation and] kingdom (Phil. 2: 11; Rom. 10: 9).  Only by this whole message can such impact be made on men’s hearts as Paul made, and such thorough change of life be effected.

 

[* NOTE. “ ‘We have the word of prophecy, made more sure, whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark place” (2 Pet. 1: 19).  Our steadfastness in an unstable age, depends on this.  Our preservation from stumbling depends on this.  Our proper insight into the real condition of the world and the church depends on this: for we cannot rightly read the signs of the times without this.  We are sure to call good evil, and evil good without this and we are sure to go wrong in our plans of Christian work whether at home or abroad without this.  The light of prophecy enables us to see afar off.  It makes us keen-sighted to all that is around us, enabling us to look under the surface of events and discern their real meaning and bearing and results.”]

 

 

As far as worldly wisdom is mixed with this divine message the latter is nullified.  Paul was well educated, but in a city of culture such as Corinth he determined to seem to be an ignoramus (the Latin equivalent of the Greek word he used, agnostic), as if acquainted with only one subject, Jesus Christ, and Him in the aspect most calculated to offend the refined, namely, as crucified, which meant as one executed as a criminal.  But he knew that his message was good seed, which, sown in hearts by the Spirit of truth, could bring forth a new life in even the most sinful of men (1 Cor. 6: 9-11).

 

 

Peter knew that believers have been “begotten again, not corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth” (1 Pet. 1: 22-25).  The statement that the word of God is seed is not so much figurative as literal.  We speak justly of “seed thoughts  Perhaps most can remember when some foul remark proved to be evil seed that duly brought forth in our heart a bitter crop of vile ideas, pictures, and ways. “Take heed what ye hear” (Mark 4: 24).

 

 

Equally so, good words are good seed, and God’s words pre-eminently so, for they are full of life, and abiding life.  Natural seeds may decay and lose vitality and their power to grow.  Human words may become inert.  No moral reformation in sinners, no radically new life in the spirit, is effected by quoting Shakespeare or Goethe, unless it be statements of truth that such may have learned from Scripture; but the word of God is inherently living, has perpetual vital energy to grow.  It is not only that it was inspired by the Holy Spirit, but that it is so inspired, and, under proper conditions, will produce Divine life in the hearer, as it is continually doing.  Many of us are eternally indebted to God that our parents sowed in our minds this imperishable seed from our earliest years.  Such sowing may be done by the simplest individual privately, as well as by the noblest preacher in public.

 

 

4. The Soil.  The message will meet with four kinds of hearers: the impervious, the shallow, the choked, and the fruitful soil.

 

 

(1) The Impervious.  The sower of the word finds hearts that seem beyond impression, impenetrable.  The path that skirts or crosses the field is trodden hard by the coming and going of passers-by.  The ceaseless contacts and affairs of daily life tend to render the heart insensible to things unseen, and it is unaffected by the truths of the gospel [of the kingdom].

 

 

Also the deceitfulness of sin indulged hardens the soul (Heb. 3: 13), so that it becomes unbelieving and disobedient and the word becomes unprofitable.  The Christian is warned against this subtle danger, for this state is possible to the redeemed, such being addressed as “brethren” in Heb. 3: 1-4, 12, the passage cited. These imperil thus their prospects in ‘the kingdom of God’ (1 Cor. 6: 7-11; Gal. 5: 19-21; Eph. 5: 3-6). While the preacher meets such hearers among the unregenerate, the teacher has to sorrow over such among the regenerate.  The former, if they so continue, will have no place in God’s kingdom: the latter will be in the kingdom through their new birth, but will forfeit the inheritance of the firstborn sons.

 

 

In such an impervious state of heart the word heard lies only on the surface of the mind.  It is not pondered by the intellect nor are the emotions stirred.  Through sheer inattention the meaning of the message is not grasped. Even Christians can remain ignorant in things divine.  It is a law of our mind that what is not understood is readily forgotten, but in things spiritual there is an agency to accelerate and assure this; “When any one heareth … and understandeth not, then cometh the Evil One, and snatcheth away that which was sown in the heart” (Matt. 13: 19).  The Devil is not anxious to remove from our minds secular knowledge.  Rather does he foster over-occupation with things earthly; they can be thorns to choke the word; but he is eager and watchful to remove immediately every remembrance of things heavenly.

 

 

Satan personally is not omnipresent and does not act in more than one place at a time; but he has countless hosts of spirit servants who co-operate in his fell efforts.  So the Lord says “then cometh Satan  The usage is as when one says “Wellington won Waterloo,” meaning, he and the thousands of soldiers he commanded.

 

 

This is the Divine explanation of the utter indifference of sinners or [regenerate] believers to [responsibility] truth heard.  No more impression has been made by the word [of the kingdom] than is made by seed on hard-trodden ground.

 

 

It is to be noted that “the birds of the heaven” represent wicked spirits.  These devoured the seed.  This illustrates that not every detail of a parable is to be pressed to a fixed meaning.  An evil spirit does not swallow and destroy the word of God itself; but he can remove it from the mind of the hearer.  Here arises the vast importance that the preacher, having himself first understood the message, shall present it so lucidly that the hearer may understand it.  Of C. G. Finney one said: “He does not preach; he explains what other people preach”; and his ministry was most fruitful.

 

 

(2) The second class of hearer is the shallow.  These have not yet become hardened and unconcerned.  They recognise the value of religion and they hear the word gladly.  Their sentiments are stirred, their emotions excited; they promptly profess belief and acceptance.  But this is merely superficial.  Just beneath the surface their nature is as a shelf of rock, harder even than the trodden path.  No roots can penetrate, no moisture can be held.  Such growth as the seed can make must needs be upward.  Such influence as the message can exert is seen quickly, but there is no grip of the truth upon the judgment, the affections, or the will.  The dew of the Spirit is not held, the water of life does not sink in; and the first breath of the hot sun of persecution withers the early promise, and the grass and its flower perish.

 

 

The vital energy of truth produced some impression, but could not sink and root and work deeply enough for the impression to survive.  It is to be feared that the “forcing” methods of much modem evangelizing have but fostered this surface and shallow work in large numbers who have soon lapsed.  There has been too much desire that the results should spring up “straightway”; quick results that can be counted and tabulated.

 

 

(3) The Thorny Ground.  The eldest son of a money-loving head of a great business was converted when a young man.  I remember him.  He had soon to choose between pleasing his Lord or his father.  Thus the thorns were in the soil when the seed was sown and germinated; the cares of this age and the deceitfulness of riches were already at hand.  He fell in with his father’s wishes, devoted himself fully to business, rose to be the head of the concern, and when well on in life had to acknowledge that he had neglected things heavenly.  He was about to retire and he expressed his intention to be more diligent in matters spiritual.  But God is not to be mocked.  The man retired and died suddenly in only a few months.  He left £90,000 and a spiritually wasted life.  The thorns had choked the word and it was unfruitful.

 

 

It can be equally so with the poor.  Care of mind can be induced by having too much or not enough of earthly goods.  In either case the heart can be like land choked with weeds.  Observe the nature of our Lord’s comparison: things not wrong in themselves can be thorns.  As they say in Devon, some soil grows only “vierns and vuzz,” ferns and furze.  Of such land God says solemnly that “its end is to be burned” (Heb. 6: 8).

 

 

A Christian was on the box-seat of an old-time horse bus.  He asked the driver if he loved God.  “Oh, I ain’t got no time for those things, mister  “Are you married  “Yes  “I’m very sorry for your wife  “Why, what’s the matter wi’ ’er  “I’m sorry you have no time to love her  “Why, I loves her every yard I drives

 

 

Thus was shown the hollowness of the excuse, but also the reality and strength of the “thorns”; the mind crowded with so many matters that there is no time for God.

 

 

Let the Christian also take warning: it was one whom the Lord loved and who truly loved Him that was “cumbered about with much serving ... anxious and troubled about many things and this as part of her supposed service to Christ Himself and to His friends (Luke 10: 40, 41).  In such believers thorns may choke the good seed, and the life, over-busy with service, be unfruitful.  It will certainly be this unless adequate time be taken to withdraw from outward activity and “sit at His feet and hear His word

 

 

In the first case pictured, the wayside, the seed found no lodgement and no life developed.  In the second case there were signs of life, but this was from the energy of the seed alone, and it did not secure the co-operation of the soil by becoming rooted.  In the third instance there was real growth, but this did not develop fully.  Luke’s account displays this feature: “They bring no fruit unto perfection” (Luke 8: 14). This warrants, indeed demands, that the warning be applied to those in whom the new birth is a fact, but growth is hindered and the newly-born man does not grow on unto maturity and usefulness.

 

 

(4) The Good Soil is described as “an honest and good heart” (Luke 8: 15).  The former word means fair to look at, as a farmer may say, “That’s a nice field  “Good” refers to the essential qualities of the soil which make it rich and productive.

 

 

Inasmuch as all men are equally dead in sin what causes the difference in some hearers of the word?  How do they come to be responsive and productive?  The Teacher did not explain this, but took the fact for granted. Yet His hearers knew well, what did not need to be mentioned, that the farmer does not cast the seed until the ground has been prepared by the plough and the rain.  Many a hard heart has been broken to pieces by trouble or sorrow, and then softened by the kindness of God, so as thus to be made ready for the message of life.

 

 

A thorough worldling was plunged into bereavement and bitter sorrow, of which he said to me that “it taught me what an insect I am, and that the world can give a man nothing when he needs it most  Brought thus to an end of himself and of men, convicted of nothingness and sinfulness, he became good soil.

 

 

Such ground has distinct characteristics which the Lord specified.  (i) The word is “heard” with attention. (ii) It is “understood”: the mind thinks it over and so receives illumination by the ever-watchful, ever-gradous Spirit of truth.  (iii) It “accepts” the message: embraces it as true, reliable, trustworthy. (iv) It “holds it fast”, being determined not to hear in vain.  It relaxes its grasp upon the things of time and sense, and grips tenaciously the things of the kingdom that are heavenly and eternal.  (v) Therefore it brings forth fruit with steadfastness.

 

 

(5) The Fruit is described in Galatians 5: 22, 23: “The fruit of the spirit [the new nature begotten by the new birth] is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control  These features characterize the kingdom of heaven, as it is written, “the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in [the energy of] the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14: 17).  Upon this the Lord will enlarge when He gives the parable of the vine (John 15).  This fruit is what He seeks in His people and is disappointed when He does not find it, which is the lesson of the barren fig tree (Luke 13: 6-9).  The steadfast in heart will study so to live as to be able to say “Let my Beloved come into His garden and eat His precious fruits” (Song of Songs 4: 16), ever acknowledging that His word is true, “From Me is thy fruit found” (Hos. 14: 8).

 

 

The first type of hearer, the utterly unresponsive, is illustrated by the Pharisees and lawyers as a whole.  With the exception of such as Nicodemus they totally “rejected for themselves the counsel of God” (Luke 7: 30).

 

 

The shallow hearers remind of those who for a time espoused Christ but when His teaching became deep and exacting they “went back and walked no more with Him” (John 6: 66).

 

 

The ground chocked with thrones is seen in the young ruler who had heard enough to desire to learn more as to how to obtain eternal life, but for whom the Lord’s demands were too severe.  He went away, sorrowful it is true; but he went away, “for he had great possessions” (Matt. 19: 22).

 

 

The good and fruitful ground represented fishermen of Galilee, harlots and rogues, with a very few of the upper classes, such as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, and all others who turned from sin and brought forth with patience the fruits of righteousness.

 

 

Later, in the days of the apostles, the rulers still proved impervious; the believers addressed in Hebrews had received the word with joy, but were in danger of withering under persecution: Demas was choked by love of this present age (2 Tim. 4: 10); while the Thessalonians endured persecutions and afflictions with patience.

 

 

Of  the still future period, the end of this age, the Revelation speaks of the hardened who, even under the fierce judgment of God, blaspheme His name (16: 9, 11); of shallow Christians in Sardis who had a name to live but were dead (3: 1); of Laodiceans choked with riches (3: 17); but also of such as walked in holiness (3: 4), kept the word of Christ’s patience (3: 10), and endured tribulation and poverty (2: 9).

 

 

Thus these four conditions have been found all through this age and will exist to its end.  The Lord of the harvest is to be praised that, though so much soil is unfruitful, and so much labour unproductive, yet there is much good soil, and that in all the world the word of God is bearing fruit and increasing (Col. 1: 6). “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not vain in the Lord” (1 Cor. 15: 58).  The Sower will gather His harvest, and it will be larger than the firstfruits now gleaned.

 

 

 

The Second Parable: THE TARES; and the Third Parable

 

Matt. 13: 24-30, 36-43; Mark 4: 4: 26-29

 

 

The second lesson as to the kingdom of God is drawn from the same sphere as the former, from agriculture, but the details differ and are the significant matters.

1. The Field.  In that former parable the soil was the heart of the individual hearer, in this the “field is the world  Not, as in many places, the whole of mankind regarded as an organized system of life, with Satan as its Prince and organizer, but the world as meaning the earth, as in Ps. 24: 1:  “The earth is Jehovah’s, and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein Here the “world” is distinguished from its inhabitants, and is the same as the “earth  Thus in the parable also, the seed sown in the field being men, the field is the earth on which they dwell.

 

 

This field is a proper possession of God, part of His universal estate or kingdom, for as the psalm quoted adds, “He hath founded and established it  The Son of man is “the man that sowed” His field, as in the parable. The subject of both parables is an activity of God in the affairs of His kingdom.

 

 

Since this owner had servants it is a fair presumption that actually they sowed the field for him.  Certainly God uses His servants in this work, because the “sons of the kingdom” become such by the work of the former parable, the sowing of the word of God [or, ‘the word of the kingdom’] in the hearts of men, and this is done by His servants.  But even so it is realistic and healthful for these servants to recognize the Lord as the proper Sower: “Sir, didst Thou not sow good seed in Thy field?”, not, “Didst not Thou give us good seed to sow  That was fact as to the former parable; but now it is a matter of placing persons in God’s kingdom and this is distinctly His own work.

 

 

2. The Seed.  In the first parable the seed was the word, the message, concerning the kingdom; here those who accept the message become themselves seed from which further fruit shall grow.  In order to spread the message the Lord scatters His people over the earth as He pleases.  Happy is the believer who is ready for this to be his experience, ready to be placed here, then to be moved there, to have life arranged and rearranged by God for the purpose of His kingdom.  Then the seeming disturbances of affairs are seen as the ordering of God and the sting and strain of them is gone.

 

 

For His own great purposes the Lord thus overrules even the wrath of man, making it to serve His own ends and praise.  Saul of Tarsus, blaspheming and murderous, causes a scattering abroad of the flourishing church at Jerusalem, with the happy result that “they went about preaching the word” and Samaria, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Syria are reached and blessed, to the glory of God in some extension of His kingdom and authority on earth (Acts 8).  The child of God is to regard himself firstly as seed, to be sown when and where the Lord of the harvest pleases.  His proper function on earth is to be a “son of the kingdom to stand for the divine right of the King of Heaven to the loyalty and obedience of all men, himself displaying this loyalty.

 

 

3. The Darnel.  The main lesson of the parable is that there was found among the wheat a weed; and not merely a foreign plant but a noxious one, capable indeed of hindering the growth of the wheat, but also harmful if ground with the corn and eaten.

 

 

The chief characteristic of darnel is that until the ear stage is reached it is indistinguishable from wheat, so that not until fruit appears is its nature detected.  This also represents persons, and to these Christ gives the fearful title “sons of the evil one  They are related spiritually to the Devil as intimately as the sons of the kingdom are to God.  “Such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, fashioning themselves into apostles of Christ.  And no marvel; for even Satan fashioneth himself into an angel of light.  It is no great thing therefore if his ministers also fashion themselves as ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works”. (2 Cor. 11: 13-15).

 

 

It is a fact well recognized in the pagan world that some men give themselves up so thoroughly to the service of sin and their god that they do literally receive into their spirit an infusion of the spirit of that god.  These have not only the sinful nature and tendencies common to all Adam’s children, but they become demonized, with diabolical subtlety, spirit-energy, and wickedness.

 

 

It is to securing this accession of spirit-energy that the mystery rites of initiation are directed.  This obtains alike in the world of degraded savages and that of cultured paganism.  It is possible that the climax of the initiatory ceremonies of the ancient Mysteries was a sight of Satan and becoming possessed by him.  To this day the Brahmin of India, having passed through initiation, is styled the “twice born  Such of the sons of the kingdom who, as faithful messengers of Christ, have had close contact with them have felt that they are indeed sons of the Evil One.  It has been my own experience.  Such are to be met also among Moslems, apostate Jews, and also various other cults falsely known as Christian.  Such sons of the Evil One were to be found among even those Jews who were inwardly convinced of the truth of Christ’s teaching.  He had to tell them plainly that they were of their father, the Devil, the proof being that in their hearts they were ready to murder Him, the Sent of God (John 8: 37-44).

 

 

In this parable the Lord warned that Satan would introduce such as these into any sphere where He placed sons of the kingdom, and that their characteristic would be that outwardly they would be so like the latter that for some time they could not be distinguished.

 

 

This had been so in measure in the history of Israel.  That people was designed and called to be the realm on earth where the Most High God was owned; it was to be His kingdom: “if ye will obey My voice ... ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests” (Ex. 19: 5, 6).  They were to be the sphere where His authority was owned, and through whom as priests He could reach out in blessing to the rebellious peoples around.  But Moses had to warn them that false prophets would arise (Deut. 13: 1-5), and the history shows that these became a chief agency in corrupting Israel, in destroying the intended testimony to the true God, and in the national overthrow.

 

 

In due time Christ had now commenced a new testimony designed to re-establish the witness to the true God (comp. 1 Thess. 1: 9: “ye turned unto God from idols to serve a living and true God”), and to extend His kingdom among all nations; and He intimates at once that the same destructive measure had been commenced by His Enemy, the Devil.  He said: “The kingdom of heaven had already become like” (bomoiothe, aor. pass).  He had before warned His followers to “beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves” (Matt. 7: 15).  For years Judas* passed as a faithful apostle and could not be distinguished by human observation, not even by his fellow-apostles (John 13: 28, 29).  But at last Satan put it into his heart to betray his Teacher and then entered into him personally to see that the deed was done (John 13: 2, 27).

[* See ‘Judas was a Regenerate Believer’ by E. Howarth:  “ … because we reject the warnings and threats of God to believers and pass them on to the [unregenerate] sinners, we cannot accept Judas was a genuine believer, this is because we ‘gospelize’ the scriptures which are addressed to the Christian!  But look at these verses in Matt. 18: 5-6.  A brother who stumbles a young believer, it were good for him that a great millstone turned by an ass were hung around his neck and he cast into the depths of the open sea, 5 miles down, I ask you were it not good for him he had never been born?  Look at 2 Peter 3: 18-22, he is speaking about teachers who teach error, teach falsely, ‘better they had not fully known, experimentally the way of righteousness, then turn back from the holy commandments delivered to them, they are worsted and their last is become worse with them than their first.’”]

Instructed thus by the Lord His first servants went forth expecting that this feature would mark the progress of the kingdom of God: “I know that after my departing grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them” (Acts 20: 29, 30).  But naturally these did not present themselves at the door of the fold howling like the wolf for its prey, or they would have found the door barred; they came in sheep’s clothing, as Christ had said.  And those among the very elders themselves who had led the sheep astray must for long have seemed to be true pastors or they would not have been acknowledged as elders.

 

 

Later Paul warns Timothy against Hymenxus and Philetus as “men who concerning the truth have missed the mark, saying that resurrection is past already, and overthrow the faith of some” (2 Tim. 2: 17, 18); and he proceeds to assure him that grievous times will come, one feature of which will be that such men will withstand the truth “even as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses ... men corrupted in mind, reprobate concerning the faith” (2 Tim. 3: 8).

 

 

Peter was equally emphatic in warning against such hypo­critical professors: “But there arose false prophets also amongst the people [Israel], as among you also there shall be false teachers, who shall privily bring in destructive heresies [sects that lead to perdition], denying even the Master [Despot] that bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction” (2 Pet. 2: 1): not speedy destruction, for they may be tolerated by God so as to test the faithful (comp. Deut. 13: 3; 1 Cor. 11: 19); but a destruction that falls swiftly and is overwhelming.

 

 

John also warned the children of God that “many false prophets are gone out into the world,” that many antichrists had arisen, forerunners of the Antichrist that cometh; and that the test of these is that they deny the Father and the Son and that Jesus is the Messiah come in flesh: that is (1) they assert that God is not Father and Son, and (2) that therefore the Son of God did not assume true human nature, and therefore (3) He did not die as the propitiation for the sins of the world.  And (4) they decline to accept the apostolic testimony as true (1 John 2: 18-23; 4: 1-6).

 

 

Jude wrote to the same effect.  He exhorted the called of God to contend earnestly for the faith deposited with the saints on trust, “for there are certain men crept in privily ... ungodly men, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness and denying our only Despot and Lord, Jesus Christ” (vers. 3, 4).

 

 

From His place in heaven, yet as also in the midst of the churches, the risen Lord repeated His warnings given when here.  In Pergamum, Satan’s throne residence at that time, there were in the church “some who held the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication  In Thyatira there sat the woman who was the counterpart of that wicked woman Jezebel in Israel.  She called herself a prophetess, and was so specious and insistent that she taught and seduced Christ’s servants, leading them to commit fornication and to have communion with idols (Rev. 2: 14, 20).

 

 

And as the mighty drama of the End Times of this age unfolds in the Revelation, the time is reached when the False Prophet deceives all men into worshipping the Antichrist (ch. 13).  At the close of his career, from the Dragon, the Beast (Antichrist), and the False Prophet demonic spirits go forth to complete the deception of those who had rejected the truth, so that they shall madly hurl themselves upon Jehovah’s buckler and be destroyed by the Word of God at His descent to this earth (16: 13, 14; 19: 11-21).

 

 

Then shall the kingdom of darkness be suppressed on earth and the kingdom of God triumph.

 

 

The features of the sons of the Evil One, as given in these few apostolic statements, are to be noted.

 

 

Their twofold object.  The injury of the flock: the winning to themselves a following.  They are wolfish and selfish.  The word “grievous” which Paul employs was used by the Lord in connexion with the wolves of His day, the scribes and the Pharisees (Matt. 23: 4).  They bound on men’s shoulders burdens grievous to be borne.  Souls were weighted with human regulations, to their deep inward injury, by being kept from the liberty of the spirit Godward which Christ came to assure.

 

 

And by attaching disciples to themselves they caused sects and schisms among the people of God, so that the flock was divided and scattered.

 

 

All priest-ridden systems, including those called Christian, show these features.  The way of life is turned to a way of death.  The free grace brought in Christ to the guilty, is banished by a scheme of rules burdensome and hurtful.

 

 

(2) Others of these false teachers tamper with the truth of resurrection and overthrow the faith of some.  1 Cor. 15 shows that by resurrection Paul meant the resurrection of the body [together with the disembodied ‘soul’ from ‘Hades’ the underworld of the dead, (Acts. 2: 27, 31; Matt. 16: 18)], and that without such resurrection there is no Christian faith and no salvation.  Matthew understood the word to refer to the body: “Many bodies of the saints that had fallen asleep were raised” (Matt. 27: 52, 53).  Those false teachers Paul named said “resurrection is past already  As no resurrection of saints in their bodies had taken place since Christ was raised this must presumably have meant what some now call a “spiritual” resurrection, that is, a transfer of the [animating] spirit being of man to some better state and place.  But, according to Paul, no such resurrection is known, and those not raised in body have no salvation.  And if resurrection had already taken place, whatever its nature, those not raised, being still alive, could not expect resurrection or salvation.  This was the true faith and hope of the gospel overthrown.

 

 

As this was the case with the assertion in question regarding the resurrection of believers, how much more anti-Christian it is to deny that the body of Christ ever rose.  Thus does a living preacher, a professed minister of Christ, write:

 

“The physical body of Jesus was subjected to a process of speedy dematerialization or evanescence ... I do not believe that the physical particles of Christ’s body ever came out of the tomb”; there was “an evanescence, perhaps the speeding up of those processes which dispose of the physical matter of our own bodies

 

 

Obviously this involves the notion of a merely “spiritual” resurrection, which is what spiritists and theosophists allege.  But this is no resurrection at all, according to the Word of God.  For in that case the Holy One of God did see corruption, and more speedily than the rest of men.  Of necessity this involves a denial of the bodily ascension of the Lord, and so the same writer adds: “the very idea seems crude and absurd*

 

 

 

This fatal error is necessarily involved in the basic falsity of Christian Science also, that matter is not real; for what does not exist cannot be raised from the dead and be glorified at the right hand of God.

 

* Leske D. Weatherhead, His Life and Ours, 303, 307, 326, 327.

 

 

(3) The deceivers in view in the passages of Scripture quoted deny, tacitly or avowedly, the true nature of God. They deny the Father and the Son, that is, that these relationships exist between these two Persons in the one Godhead.

 

 

Swedenborg denied this distinction of Persons and this relationship in God, and therefore that the Son was sent by the Father and became man.*

 

* The True Christian Religion, 43, 142 (33).

 

 

Russellism (“Jehovah’s Witnesses”) denies the eternal Sonship, asserting that before He became man Jesus was of only angelic rank.

 

 

Christadelphianism denies the eternal existence of the Son of God: “there must therefore have been a time when the Father existed but the Son did not” (Who is the God of the Bible? p. 3).

 

 

(4) A person who has not a child is not a father.  Hence to deny that God has a Son is to deny that He is a Father.  It is the folly and confusion of Unitarian thought that God is styled Father though not having an only-begotten Son, of His own eternal nature.

 

 

They come perilously near to this error - little as they may suspect it - who question if this relationship of Son to Father existed in the Godhead before Christ’s incarnation.  For in that case there has come by the incarnation an essential change in the Godhead, whereas in His essence God is not susceptible of change.

 

 

(5) But in the denial of the true deity of the Son of God, and regarding Him as only a superior and exalted angel or man, there is of necessity the denial that Jesus Christ is “our only Despot and Lord as Peter and Jude describe Him.  The absolute sovereignty of the Son of God is set aside by all teaching that limits His person to something less than deity or that exalts humanity in general to His level.  Such teaching is essentially pagan, not Christian.  As Paul showed to a group of former pagans, then Christians, there are gods many and lords many in heathendom, but for Christians there is “one Lord, Jesus Christ and He is the Creator “through Whom are all things” (1 Cor. 8: 5, 6).

 

 

(6) This degradation of the Son of God involves a setting aside of His atoning, redeeming death. For one aspect of that death was that He "bought" us, and so doubled His proprietary right as Creator by the right of redemption. These rights these errorists refuse to acknowledge, thus maintaining their rebellion against the Father Who conferred them on the Son by “giving all things into His hand” (John 3: 35; 13: 3).  This last is not a mere assertion of His follower John, for the latter had heard the Son Himself declare that “all things have been delivered unto Me by My Father” (Matt. 11: 27).

 

 

(7) The conflict between the teachers of these false views and the writers of the New Testament is so complete and irreconcilable that the former are compelled to reject the latter as being merely recorders of their own impressions and opinions.  Naturally they refuse to admit such a claim as that made by Paul, that “the things which I write unto you are the commandment of the Lord” (1 Cor. 14: 37).  They therefore involve themselves in the sharp and terrible condemnation of John, when writing concerning the spirit of antichrist already in the world: “We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he who is not of God heareth us not.  By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error” (1 John 4: 1-6).

 

 

(8) The Lord emphasized the conscious deceitfulness of such men: sheep’s clothing donned by the ravenous wolf (Matt. 7: 15).  They creep in privily and privily introduce their destructive doctrines, say Jude and Peter. The Jesuits may profess to be what they will if thereby the interests of their order and Church can be promoted. Modernists who deny everything Christian can be ministers and Professors of Divinity, taking salaries from evangelical sources though denying all evangelical doctrine.  They may get their positions by false pretences, and then hold on to them, so as to continue to ravage the flock of God.  They employ terms and phrases which for centuries have had a recognized and settled meaning, but they use them dishonestly and subtly to instil false ideas.  Thus they first undermine and then overthrow the faith of many.

 

 

It is the same subtlety with which J. H. Newman sought in Tract XC to show that an avowedly Reformed document, the Book of Common Prayer, could be read in a thoroughly Romish sense.

 

 

Often brilliant in scholarship, pleasant in manners, suave of speech, they are darnel that seems like wheat.   And usually they have done their deadly work before it can be recognized by the many.

 

 

In the early Christian centuries the Gnostics fulfilled all these conditions.  Outwardly they appeared to be vanquished by the orthodox Christians and their sects died out.  Actually their errors had taken deep root and have persisted and revived ever since.  In the same way Swedenborg faded from view. His “New Church” is to-day quite insignificant.  But his false teachings have permeated widely.  I asked an avowed Unitarian what place of worship in the town she attended, there being no Unitarian church.  She replied that the latter fact did not matter much because their views had become widely held in the churches and were taught in many pulpits.  This was by ministers holding professedly one or other orthodox creed, and I knew it to be true.

 

 

The fruit has been abundant and rank.  At the beginning of this century R. J. Campbell was pouring forth his miscalled New Theology.  It was not new.  He confessed later that its essence was drawn from the ancient Greek philosophers and that they had derived it from the still older Hindu sages.  In 1903, while he was still preaching at Brighton, I spent some weeks there.  An assistant in a large business house there told me of the ungodly lives of fellow-assistants, and that when she had reproved and warned them the answer was, “Don’t talk to us about hell: Mr. Campbell says there is no such place  Yet the preacher whose influence bore such bad fruit could on occasion preach such seemingly orthodox doctrine that a truly godly evangelical minister I knew thought him a prophet come from God.  Thus is darnel like wheat.  Mr. Campbell renounced his heathen philosophy and joined the Church of England.  He publicly stated that during all the time he had been teaching his former views he had not been satisfied with them, because in his heart he had been “seeking an altar,” that is, a religion that included sacrifice for sin.  What did this mean but that he had never been honest and with a good conscience while spreading so forcibly his false philosophy?  Two other prominent Non-conformist ministers, the Baptist Dr. John Clifford and the Congregationalist Dr. R. F. Horton, had openly supported Mr. Campbell in his pernicious ministry.

 

 

(9) The religious phenomenon now in view is stupendous.  In all periods, and in all countries, whenever God has planted sons of His kingdom, before long there have been commingled with them these sons of the Evil One, not at first to be distinguished.  The feature is universal and unceasing, evidencing design and skill, as did the work of the sower of darnel.  The only possible explanation is that given by Christ: “the enemy that sowed them is the Devil” (Matt. 13: 59).  The continuance of the sowing the long centuries through demands a sower who neither dies nor sleeps.

 

 

As the Sower of the good seed was a person, the Son of man, so is the sower of the darnel a person, the Devil. Yet one of the wiles of his “sons” is to deny personality to their spiritual father.

 

 

His object has been to hinder the sons of the kingdom from bearing fruit unto God.  The Gnostics aimed at a compound of religions and philosophies; Christianity was to be included, but only so that it could be corrupted; for when salt combines with corruption it loses its saltness and is the most worthless of all substances, not being useful on even a dunghill (Matt. 5: 13; Mark 9: 50; Luke 14: 34, 35).

 

 

Fifty years ago Dr. Timothy Richards of China proposed that the best elements should be taken from the religions of China and from Christianity, the poorer elements of all religions being dropped, and from this melting pot there was to come forth a religion which all could accept, and thus thousands of Chinese could be gained, instead of ones and twos.  The Communists to-day know better the true essential nature of the Christian faith and that it cannot be fused with any non-Christian philosophy or religion.

 

 

Parliaments of Religion and World Councils of Churches aim at similar fusion, or confusion, and serve the same destructive ends.  On the Indian Ocean I conversed with a Hindu pundit on his way to such a Parliament at Chicago.  His hatred of pure Christian truth was as virulent as that of Nietzsche and his spirit was that of a veritable son of the Devil.

 

 

Of late years the English-speaking world has had a spate of private translations of the Bible by modernistic scholars, Moffat and the American Revised Standard Version being the two best known and, in our judgment, most injurious.  Why have these many anti-fundamentalist men thought it worth while to deluge the church with these books?  A probable subtle effect is to instil the feeling that the Scriptures are most indefinite as to both the original text and the meaning.  Why did one of these men think proper to write of Peter’s “barbarous Greek”?  Whether a modern Englishman knows Greek better than a man who lived with that language around him may be questioned; in any case the remark could not but suggest that Peter was not a spokesman of the Spirit of God.

 

 

Behind all such activity, whether recognized by men or not, the Lord exposes the activity of the Devil, setting his agents among the godly for the injury of the latter and to rob, as far as possible, the “Householder the Owner of the field, of something of His desired harvest.  And this fell work he does by night while men slept which is not in itself a matter of reproach, nor did the householder blame his servants); that is, Satan acts invisibly and stealthily, which calls for the greater watchfulness in saints.

 

 

(10) The Situation is Unchangeable.  The main stress of the parable is that no attempt to eradicate the darnel can succeed or is to be attempted.  In nature the roots of the two plants so intertwine that to pull up the one would drag up the other.  This does not mean that a local group of believers may not withdraw from fellowship with a known teacher of doctrines that cause sects; for a man that makes factions is to be refused fellowship (Titus 3: 10), and from such as maintain a form of godliness but deny its power, the son of the kingdom is to turn away (2 Tim. 3: 5).

 

 

But while such local and individual action is to be taken against a known individual there is to be no general attempt to eradicate the darnel, nor would it succeed.  “Let both grow together until the harvest” at the consummation of the age (Matt. 13: 30, 39).

 

 

At this point the utmost attention is demanded.  Until the time of harvest shall have come the good and the bad will stand on earth side by side, and in the harvest alone will they be separated.  This is our Lord’s direct refutation of the wholly false notion that the sons of the kingdom will go on multiplying until they only are found on earth and then the Lord will enter into His kingdom.  To uphold that idea the parable of the tares must be wholly rejected for it cannot be accommodated thereto.

 

 

“ ‘Let both grow together until the harvest Pregnant words, which tell us that evil is not, as so many dream, gradually to wane and disappear before good, the world to find itself in the Church, but each to unfold itself more fully, out of its own root, after its own kind: till at last they stand face to face, each in its highest manifestation, in the persons of Christ and of Antichrist; on the one hand, an incarnate God, on the other, the man in whom the fulness of all Satanic power will dwell bodily.  Both are to grow ‘until the harvest,’ till they are ripe, one for destruction, and the other for full salvation” (Trench, Parables, 99).

 

 

The parable also forbids the notion of some good men that the Christian sphere at its commencement was everywhere marked by pristine beauty and unity, which by gradual decay fell into ruin.  The Enemy did not so long delay his attack.  Already among the apostolic twelve he used Peter to put a stumbling-block before Christ (Matt. 16: 23), and later he found in Judas his traitorous agent.  In only the second Christian church Simon Magus appeared (Acts 8: 18-24).  Paul had scarcely left Corinth when faction-makers arose (1 Cor. 3).  It was not long before “false brethren ... came in privily that they might bring us into bondage” (Gal. 2: 4).  The darnel was sown from the very beginning of the preaching by the Son of Man.  The dispensational theory that the church lost its first glory as a society and fell into ruins is therefore without foundation.

 

 

4. The Harvest.  (1) Its Time.  There is a definite season for harvest: “in the season (kairos) of harvest” (Matt. 13: 30). For harvest is the completion of a process, the climax of growth.

 

 

 

The Third Parable: SPONTANEOUS GROWTH

 

Mark 4: 26-29

 

 

Mark inserts here a cognate parable not included by Matthew.  It reads:

 

 

And He said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed upon the earth; and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring up and grow, he knoweth not how.  The earth beareth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.  But when the fruit is ripe, straightway he sendeth forth the sickle, because the harvest is come.

 

 

This exhibits:

 

 

(a) That the affairs of the kingdom of God go on though man perceiveth it not.  This is because the Son of man and His Enemy uninterruptedly continue their activities, even as the forces of nature go on automatically: “the earth beareth fruit spontaneouslyautomatically (automate).

 

 

(b) Growth is a process and takes time: blade, ear, and full grain.

 

 

(c) Harvest is determined by ripeness, not by calendar or clock: “when the fruit permits, straightway he sends forth the sickle, because the harvest has come”permits” points to a definite season and action; paradoi aor. subj.).

 

 

Thus God’s judgments are at proper seasons, which, though in His foreknowledge known and controlled by Him, are not determined by the calendar as are human assizes, but by the moral consideration of ripeness of character and ways.  “The iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full” (Gen. 15: 16), and therefore full judgment on them was delayed for 400 years.  This gave opportunity for repentance in humble hearts (2 Pet. 3: 9).

 

 

Returning to Matthew and the Second Parable, the season of harvest is the Consummation of the Age (Matt. 13: 39, 40, 49).  The disciples took up this expression on Olivet and asked the Lord, “What shall be the sign of Thy parousia and consummation of the age?” (Matt. 24: 3).  This question drew from Christ that further prophetic discourse.  He used the term once again in the heartening assurance to His witnesses.  “Lo, I am with you all the days until the consummation of the age*

 

* Telos is simply an end, conclusion.  According to Trench sunteleia is a point of conjunction between the end of one age and the commencement of another age (Parables 103, note 2)  But I do not find support for this. The term seems to point to various matters coming to an end together.

 

 

The term is part of the larger conception of the ages of time.  The finite mind is of limited power and cannot grasp the fact of infinite duration.  This is as true of angels as of men, though they being of greater power than man may be able to conceive of greater stretches of time than we can grasp as yet.  Therefore as soon as finite beings were created time began, that is, eternity was divided into successive periods such as the finite mind can conceive.  It follows from this that time can never cease, because the created mind can never become infinite and able to conceive of eternity.  Rev. 10: 6 says “There shall be delay no longer” (R.V.).

 

 

These ages were of course foreseen by God with all the changes they would involve in the principles and developments of His ways with creation.  A few passages are of first importance.

 

 

i. 1 Tim. 1: 17.  God is “the King of the ages  Sin has brought fearful havoc in the course and working of these vast periods.  How far back time began, or how many and extended ages preceded Adam we do not know.  Those pre-Adamic periods can have been long enough for the immense eras that geologists imagine. But sin and its dire results are not triumphant and uncontrolled: they are under the sovereign mastery of the King of the ages.

 

 

ii. Hebrews 1: 2 informs us that the creative activity of God was effected through the agency of the Son: “through Whom also He [the Father] made the ages  This included the material structure of the universe, its living beings, and the course of the ages.  So that the Son is the actual Ruler of all that has developed or will develop during the ages, and is therefore the judge at all its judicial crises.

 

 

iii. Heb. 9: 26 is the one further passage where the term before us is found.  It tells us that “now, once, at the consummation of the ages hath He [the Son of God] been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself  This perfected work can never be repeated.

 

 

Calvary is the central point to which all preceding ages led and from which all succeeding ages flow.  It conditioned the ways of God prior and subsequent, making it right that grace should be available and recovery from sin possible.  The fact that the Lamb of God had been thus foreknown from before the foundation of the world (1 Pet. 1: 19, 20) would seem to have made possible forgiveness of sin in all ages which preceded His cross, and therefore forgiveness of the sin of angels and of such beings as probably existed on earth in ages prior to Adam.  For in Christ God reconciled to Himself the cosmos (2 Cor. 5: 19), and Christ’s precious blood avails to cleanse the heavenly things (Heb. 9: 23).  Whether any such beings availed themselves of the clemency of God we are not told.  We do know that it was on the ground of what Christ would suffer that the sins of men before He came were forgiven (Rom. 3: 25).

 

 

iv. Eph. 3: 10, 11 shows that there is a divine “purpose of the ages  This repels the false notion that, though there is a Creator, yet He put the universe in the grip of fixed laws, Himself retired into the background and never interferes with the outworking of those laws.  On the contrary, He has a purpose running through all the ages and He ceaselessly overrules all events to the fulfilment of that purpose.

 

 

The particular part of that purpose in view in Eph. 3: 10, 11 has to do with that society of redeemed persons being gathered in this age, known as the church of God.  When that company shall have been completed one factor in the course of this present age will have been perfected, which will contribute to the consummation of the age.

 

 

The Harvest at that consummation covers two operations as it affects the wheat and the darnel.

 

 

A. The Wheat Harvest.

 

 

The Lord put this age in contrast to the next [millennial] age, and showed that the means by which the godly dead will attain to that age is resurrection (Luke 20: 34, 35).  Now that ‘first resurrection’ will be brought about by Himself descending from the throne of God to proximity to this earth (1 Thess. 4: 15-17).  That event will synchronize with the consummation of this [evil] age, even as He said in the explanation of this parable of the tares, “the Son of man shall send forth His angels” (Matt. 13: 41).  This will be His harvest-home of the godly and the harvest of judgment for the wicked.

 

 

He will say later on Olivet: “They shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.  And He shall send forth His angels, with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His chosen from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Matt. 24: 30, 31).  The same event is pictured in Rev. 14: 14-16, under the same figure.  An angel with a mighty voice calls to the One sitting on the cloud, “Send forth Thy sickle [angels] and reap: for the hour to reap is come; for the harvest of the earth is dried up and therefore is ready for the gamer.  Similarly, in the parable of the tares, the Householder said to the reapers, “gather the wheat into My barn

 

 

This service of holy angels will assure that no mistake is made in distinguishing between wheat and darnel, and it will guarantee that no resistance by the wicked shall thwart justice.  It was angels who destroyed Sodom, first putting righteous Lot into safety and then burning up the wicked (Gen. 19).  It was a band of “angels of evil” who plagued the Egyptians but spared the Israelites (Ps. 78: 49).  Angels supervised the judgment of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, again delivering the godly and destroying the wicked (Ezek. 9). They are executioners of the holy wrath of God as well as protectors of His people, which dual work they will perform at the coming consummation of the age.  They will convey the godly into the safety of the heavenly garner in the clouds, and will cast the godless into the furnace of fire.

 

 

This harvest is not the judgment before the great white throne after the millennial kingdom and prior to the new heavens and earth.  That final assize of the universe is to be held at a point of time where earth and heaven flee away, and it includes all the dead who had not been raised in the first resurrection (Rev. 20: 1 -15).  This judgment of tares is of persons living on earth at the consummation of this age, not at the close of the following millennial age.

 

 

It will be well to observe here that all the parables of Christ concerning the end of this age regard persons living at the time when He returns and do not teach concerning the dead.  Of course, the principles of justice are the same for both classes, but the details vary greatly.  Confusion and mistake have arisen from attempting to apply the parables to the dead.

 

 

B. The Darnel Harvest.

 

 

This takes place in two stages: (a) the gathering of the weeds into bundles, and (b) the later casting of them into the fire.

 

 

The former operation is illustrated in Rev. 16: 14, 16: “spirits of demons go forth unto the kings of the whole inhabited earth to gather them together unto the war of the great day of God, the Almighty ... and they gathered them together into the place which is called in Hebrew Har-Magedon  But into the very midst of this gathering of the armies of the Beast the Lord interposes the announcement, “Behold, I come as a thief This therefore is the moment of the gathering of the wheat into the barn, for His coming as thief is applied to His own in Matt. 24: 42-44; Luke 12: 39; 2 Pet. 3: 10-12; 1 Thess. 5: 2; Rev. 3: 3.

 

 

It is not that the darnel is burned up immediately it is gathered together.  The coming as a thief takes place during that process of gathering.  Matt. 13: 30 coincides with this, for it reads: “Gather up first the tares and bind them in bundles with a view to burning them” (pros to katakausai auta).  The picture used makes this clear.  The whole field being ripe, wheat and darnel alike, it is easy to distinguish them, and no harm will now come to the wheat by separating them.  But when the weeds have been all segregated and separately bound, no farmer would think of setting fire to them so long as the wheat was at hand on the field.  The latter would be removed to safety and afterward the darnel would be burned.

 

 

This is important as showing the point in the consummation of the age when the wheat is removed to the heavenly garner: it is just before the destruction of the Lord’s enemies, while these are assembling to the final battle at Har-Magedon.  This is further shown in Rev. 14: 14-20: for after the Son of man has gathered His harvest to the clouds (vers. 14-16) then follows the vintage of the earth and it being crushed in the winepress of the great wrath of God (vers. 18-20; ch. 19: 15; comp. Isa. 63: 1-6).

 

 

The Furnace of Fire.  How fearful is the prospect of these sons of the Evil One!  They share the doom of their father the Devil.

 

 

“The setting forth of the terrible doom of ungodly men under the image of the burning with fire of thorns, briers, weeds, chaff, barren branches, dead trees is frequent in Scripture; thus see 2 Sam. 23: 6, 7; Matt. 3: 10-12; 7: 19; Isa. 66: 24; etc., etc.  But dare we speak of it as an image merely?  The fire reappears in the interpretation of the parable; the angels “shall cast them those, namely, ‘which do iniquity into a furnace of fire  Fearful words indeed: and the image, if it be an image, at all events borrowed from the most dreadful and painful form of death in use among men.  Something we read of it in Scripture. ... Whatever the ‘furnace of fire’ may mean here, or ‘the lake of fire’ (Rev. 19: 20; 20: 10).  ‘the fire that is not quenched” (Mark 9: 48), ‘the everlasting fire’, (Matt. 25: 41; comp. Luke 16: 24; Mal. 4: 1), elsewhere, this at all events is certain; that they point to some doom so intolerable that the Son of God came down from heaven and tasted all the bitterness of death, that He might deliver us from ever knowing the secrets of anguish, which, unless God be mocking men with empty threats, are shut up in these terrible words: ‘There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth’ (comp. Matt. 22: 13; Luke 13: 28).” (Trench, Parables, 104, 105)

 

 

The Reward of the Righteous.

 

 

How ravishing is the prospect of the sons of the kingdom!  They share the glory of their Father: “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13: 43). God had called them through the gospel unto “the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ,” yea, “into His own kingdom and glory that is, into the heavenly portion of the kingdom.  They, on their part, had responded to the call and were suffering persecution at the hands of God’s Enemy (2 Thess. 2: 14; 1 Thess. 2: 12-14; 2 Thess. 1: 3-12). Or as Peter wrote to persecuted saints: “The God of all grace called you unto His eternal glory in Christ. ... Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure” (1 Pet. 5: 10; 2 Pet. 1: 1-11).

 

 

These sons of the kingdom have seen the Sun of righteousness in His glory and have become glorious (1 John 3: 2).  Thus had it been promised five centuries before, and Christ repeated the promise.  Speaking of that same period, the consummation of the age, which should bring a resurrection unto eternal life, the angel had said to Daniel that “they that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever” (Dan. 12: 1-3).

 

 

It must be stressed that “righteous” here means those who have practised righteousness.  To be sure they had first had judicial righteousness in Christ put to their account, but in these passages practical righteousness is meant.  The sons of the Evil One wrought unrighteousness, the sons of the kingdom wrought righteousness, and suffered somewhat for doing so.  They received fulfilment of two Scriptures, samples of many: “through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God”: “if we endure, we shall also reign with Him” (Acts 14: 22; 2 Tim. 2: 12).

 

 

This parable is the basis of much later teaching, to the right understanding of which it is a key.

 

 

 

Parable Four: THE MUSTARD SEED

 

Matt. 13: 31, 32; Mark 4: 30-32; Luke 13: 18, 19

 

 

The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field: which indeed is less than all seeds: but when it is grown, it is greater then than the herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the heaven come and lodge in the branches thereof.

 

 

 

Mark adds the descriptive clause “and putteth out great branches Matthew describes the soil as “field Mark as “earth Luke as “his garden  This illustrates the features that differences in detail need not be pressed to yield different specific meanings; and also that differences may not be contradictions; for any soil is earth, and a garden may be a corner of a field.  But “field” in Matthew accords with the preceding parable, “the field is the world  The lesson is a further phase which the kingdom of heaven will display on earth.

 

 

On another occasion the Lord compared faith to a grain of mustard seed (Matt. 17: 20).  The expression was in proverbial use, meaning anything extremely small.

 

 

Some learned expositors regard this parable as supporting the opinion that, though the church which Christ was founding was in its beginning small and insignificant, yet it had in it Divine energy of growth, and would develop until all mankind had been gathered into salvation under its shadow, as birds shelter in a tree.  As warrant for this last detail they cite Dan. 4: 12 and Ezek. 31: 6.  Thus Alford treats the parable as revealing

 

the inherent self‑developing power of the kingdom of heaven as a seed containing in itself the principle of expansion;

 

and he regards this as pointing to

 

the penetrating of the whole mass of humanity, by degrees, by the influence of the Spirit of God, so strikingly illustrated in the earlier ages by the dropping of heathen customs and worship: in modern times more gradually and secretly advancing, but still to be plainly seen in the various abandonments of criminal and unholy practices (as e.g. in our own time of slavery and duelling and the increasing abhorrence of war among Christian men), and without doubt in the end to be universally manifested.

 

 

That was the deceptive surface as seen by an eminent and sanguine Christian of the nineteenth century; but this twentieth century, with cruel blow on blow, has shattered the baseless fabric of the dream, and has shown that human nature, incited by wicked spirits, has not changed and can speedily revert from “civilization” to the vilest and cruellest days and ways of heathendom.  Moreover, the proportion of non-Christians to Christians on earth is far vaster to-day than ever; and in those very Western areas where, a century ago, the gospel seemed to be widening its public influence, there has been a shocking recrudescence of war, violence, vice, and crime, perhaps surpassing in extent the worst periods of the ancient world.  Any prospect of the kingdom of heaven reaching universal triumph by the slow and peaceful progress suggested above has been relegated to a future so remote that it is wholly negligible and wholly improbable, not to say wholly unscriptural.

 

 

The learned Dean mentions some general influences of the gospel in the first centuries and then passes to recent days; but naturally the thousand intervening years of the Dark Ages yielded him no ground for his view and hope; and now, after a brief period in which God caused the message to spread over the earth, He has permitted the present deluge of Satanic activity and is allowing His work to be greatly restricted over half the world and its population.  This compels the question whether it was ever His design that His kingdom should conquer the earth in this age and by present means, or whether He must not have a quite different programme. In this case the meaning of this parable must be quite different from that given above and to be found in many other devout writers.

 

 

The theory advanced shows that the writers equate the kingdom of God with the church of God.  When we reach Matthew 16 where the church of God is first mentioned in the New Testament, it will be shown that the two conceptions are quite distinct, as was indicated above at the beginning of this chapter.  The parables depicted phases which would arise in the movement to assert the kingly rights of God.  Truly it is the members of the church who assert those rights and effect that movement; but a chief lesson of the parables is the activities of the Enemy to counteract that movement, and to do so by corrupting its inner spirit and outer form.

 

 

It is true that in warm climes the tiny mustard seed sometimes grows to the size of a fig tree into which a man may climb and in which birds may roost.  But that is exceptional; normally its growth is that of a herb, and to become a tree is abnormal.  The picture therefore intimates that the outward condition of those who nominally stand for God may become abnormal.

 

 

The Lord showed what was His intention by describing His followers as “a little flock” to whom His Father purposed to give the kingdom.   The latter clause shows that the condition of being a “little flock” is to persist until the time when disciples shall receive the kingdom; for had they by that time become something vast the kingdom would not in that case be given to a “little flock” (Luke 12: 32).

 

 

This smallness of the flock is implied in them being “sheep in the midst of wolves” (Matt. 10: 16): the flock small, the pack so large as to surround them.  During the first three centuries after Christ this condition continued: Christians were few comparatively, heathen were many.  But the Enemy early designed to change this situation, to the advantage of his kingdom.  He commenced this manoeuvre early in the second century, by inducing Christians to elevate a single elder to be the “bishop” of each little local group of believers.  Then he advanced by inducing these “bishops” to meet in districts for mutual counsel as to the churches of the district, which became the rudiment of a diocese.  This led on to general Councils, and presently to the exalting of one bishop (of Rome, the capital of the Empire) to be the Primate over the now Confederate Church.

 

 

This universal organized Church supplanted the separate unaffiliated local churches which alone the apostles formed without inter-church organization.  And in the fourth century this Church Constantine made the official Church of the Empire, and tens of thousands of unregenerate pagans were “baptized” into “Christians  This meant that what still styled itself the kingdom of God had ceased to be a lowly herb and had expanded into a tree.  The “little flock” was still to be found in the relatively few who followed the teaching and ways of the Lord and His apostles, and the State Church, still nominally Christian, became the howling wolves to tear and kill them.

 

 

This dread process has been seen again and again.  Practically every Protestant denomination has gone through the same development.  Beginning as a few persecuted witnesses to some God’s truth or practice, these also have developed into Corporations of size, intolerant of dissidents.

 

 

The process can be watched among certain Christians where one might least expect and can most regret it, the “Plymouth Brethren  They began as small and independent groups of believers, zealous only to obey the Word of God and further His rights among men.  But the first of these small groups of England, at Plymouth, allowed itself to become a very large community, in which fact the Enemy found his first great opportunity to corrupt and divide.

 

 

At the same period (the thirties of the last century) another such small group commenced at Bethesda Chapel, Bristol, only seven believers meeting at the table of the Lord, purposing to follow His Word in all things.  They also unwisely grew to be a very large community, and there the Enemy found his second opportunity to attack and divide.

 

 

The human agent in these divisions was an exceptionally able, devoted, and learned disciple.  The one party that followed his lead (Exclusive Brethren) accepted his rejection of the New Testament feature of independent churches and regarded all their assemblies all over the world as one community as regards order and discipline.  Again the Enemy saw his advantage and has divided and divided them again and again.

 

 

The other churches, which refused the ruling principle in question, and remained separate companies, thereby avoided general divisions, became mighty in evangelism, and saw the Lord of the harvest thrust forth hundreds and hundreds of His servants to preach in many distant countries; and He greatly blessed their labours.

 

 

But the present generation has seen the same skilful and untiring Enemy take advantage of this vast and blessed service to weld the greater number of these workers into a Missionary Organization, with its Central Office, Magazine, List of some 1,100 workers, its central fund, and its huge annual meetings in London.  This has brought diminished unction and deterioration.  And now it is the few who study to adhere in all things to New Testament ways, while the leaders in this centralizing movement have openly accepted the principle of Expediency as their guide.

 

 

How greatly to the purpose is the prayer of the early Moravians, “From the unhappy desire of becoming great, good Lord deliver us

 

 

The same disastrous tendency can be traced in detail.  Great cathedrals, fine churches, large halls, vast congregations, extensive schools and hospitals; correspondingly large funds all done on a noble scale, and all tending away from the condition of the lowly herb to that of the great tree.  And the promoters will all avow that their one design is to do things worthily of God and to strengthen His kingdom, not perhaps seeing that there develops in their own heart the spirit of the great Emperor who said, “Is not this great Babylon which I have built?” (Dan. 4: 30).

 

 

Let each of us examine his own heart.  How sadly often it has been seen that a poor and spiritual brother having been prospered in business, or having by diligence advanced in learning, or having otherwise become great in outward condition, has become dwarfed spiritually when important outwardly, a Diotrephes who loves to have the pre-eminence and to lord it over God’s heritage.  The history is repeated, “When he was strong, his heart was lifted up, so that he did corruptly” (2 Chron. 26: 16).  “From the unhappy desire of becoming great, good Lord deliver me!”; for as certainly as a man, a church, a community becomes great the birds of the heaven will make themselves at home in its branches.

 

 

The Birds of the Heaven.

 

 

Ezek. 31: 6 and Dan. 4: 12. offer no moral parallel to the supposed meaning of our parable by which it is made to picture the conversion of all nations through the peaceful preaching of the gospel.  For the kings of Assyria and Babylon were barbarous conquerors ruling ruthlessly conquered nations, whereas the kingdom of God is marked by righteousness, peace and joy.  And these conquered peoples pictured as birds dwelling in trees did not submit gladly to the situation, as it is suggested they will yet do in the kingdom of God.

 

 

But in truth the Lord had only just before explained clearly what He now meant by birds of the heaven.  For in the parable of the sower it was these who snatched away the seed of the word, and Christ declared that they represented the Evil One, and of course his demon servants.  It is the spirits of darkness who can enjoy and utilize the great organizations and great individuals which pass as Christian, but are abnormal growths alien to the kingdom of heaven.  For that kingdom is composed of little children and no others can enter it or become great in it (Matt. 19: 1-6; 19: 14; Mark 10: 13-15; Luke 19: 15-17).

 

 

There is a kingdom into which none enter but children, in which the children play with infinite forces, where the child’s little finger becomes stronger than the giant world; a wide kingdom, where the world exists only by sufferance; to which the world’s laws and developments are for ever subjected; in which the world lies like a foolish wilful dream in the solid truth of the day.  (W. Fleming Stevenson, Praying and Working, 1863.)

 

 

Nor is there any other sufficient explanation of the pride, self-sufficiency, luxury, and cruelty that have so constantly developed in great societies and great individuals except that they have been infected with the spirit of the Evil One, through those spirit agents who promote, enter, and inspire that which is outwardly great.  It was by a nominal Christian king and his ecclesiastical minions that the saintly Samuel Rutherford was summoned to appear (1661), that they might judicially murder him as they had already slain other leaders of his godly type.

 

 

But he was already on his death-bed, and on hearing of it, calmly remarked that he had got another summons before a superior judge and judiciary, and sent the message.  “I behove to answer my first summons, and ere your day arrive, I will be where few kings and great folk come.” (Bonar, Letters of Samuel Rutherford, Biographical Sketch.)

 

 

Once again: “From the unhappy desire of becoming great, good Lord deliver us

 

 

 

 

Parable Five: THE LEAVEN AND THE MEAL

 

Matt. 13: 33; Luke 13: 20, 21

 

1. Leaven.

 

 

It has been justly observed that the tree of the preceding parable represents growth outward and visible, but that leaven works in secret:  It was hidden in the meal.  Those who regard the visible growth as representing the final triumph of the gospel over all mankind, naturally see in the leaven affecting the whole mass of meal another indication of that triumph, only viewed as the quiet inward influence of the truth changing mankind.

 

 

In support of this some say that leaven is not invariably a symbol of evil and cite the two loaves at Pentecost, which were waved before Jehovah, yet were baken with leaven (Lev. 23: 15-17).  But why did these contain leaven?  Passover having been fulfilled at Golgotha, this next feast, fifty days later, must point to Pentecost. That was the day when believers in Christ, being anointed with the Holy Spirit, became witnesses to Christ (John 15: 26, 27), pictured by two, the number of witness (Deut. 19: 15; John 8: 17; etc.).  But because in them, as still in the flesh, there was sin in principle, the two loaves, which prefigured them as witnesses, were mixed with leaven (see Kellog, Leviticus, “Expositors’ Bible,” 460, 461; Notes on Leviticus by C.H.M., 315).

 

 

The same principle explains the presence of leaven in some of the wheaten cakes of the peace offering (Lev. 7: 13).  The leavened cakes were associated with the thanksgiving of the offerer.  Now thanksgiving, even though inspired by a godly spirit, is a product of the heart of the worshipper, and sin being still an element in him, his praise is sullied, which was typified by the leaven.  That is a deep and searching word which speaks of “the iniquity of the holy things the children of Israel shall hallow in all their holy gifts” (Ex. 28: 38).  It has been said justly that the types are as rigid as mathematics.

 

 

But if it be admitted that Scripture elsewhere than in the parable always uses leaven as a symbol of evil, it is still argued that this is not by necessity, but that it can rightly be regarded in this parable as a symbol of a good influence.  It is truly said that the same object may picture either good or evil, as when a lion is now a symbol of Satan, now of God, now of the Son of God (1 Pet. 5: 8; Hos. 5: 14; Rev. 5: 5).  Similarly, it is urged, the action of leaven in meal, which can be hurtful, can also be helpful, as when bread is thereby made more wholesome.

 

 

Incidentally, I beg to question this last assertion.  In the course of travel I have eaten not a little unleavened native bread, and I am pretty sure that it is more sustaining than leavened bread.  But this apart, it is to be remembered that, in order that leavened bread may be eaten, the normal action of the leaven must be arrested by great heat, apart from which the dough would be duly and wholly corrupted.

 

 

Now this process of arrestment the Lord did not introduce into the parable, and it is not allowable for us to put into a picture a feature the Artist left out and which is not of necessity implied, and then to make the meaning depend on that inserted feature.  As He drew the picture the leaven continued to work until the whole lump of dough was leavened, it was not that the action of the leaven was stopped and the dough baked for bread.

 

 

In those cases where one figure is used in opposite senses it will be found that no doubt can arise as to whether the sense is good or evil.  In the present instance the parable in no wise makes clear that leaven has an opposite typical meaning to that which it has in all other places in the Word of God, and so it is to be understood as used here in harmony with its otherwise invariable use as symbolizing an evil influence.

 

 

The nature of that influence can be learned easily from Scripture.

 

 

1.  Leaven is something inharmonious with redemption from sin, indeed so utterly contrary thereto that its mere presence in the house during the seven days of the great redemption festival of Passover was punishable with death (Ex. 12: 19).  Moreover, no sacrifice offered upon the altar of atonement was to have contact with it (Ex. 34: 25; Lev. 2: 11).  On the contrary the cakes that were to contain leaven, in the two instances above-mentioned, had to be accompanied by atoning sacrifices, but were not themselves to be burned on the altar. Hence the charge of Amos that the Israelites were burning leavened sacrifices (Amos 4: 5; where “offer” should read as R.V. margin “offer by burning”).

 

 

2.  The Lord specified the teachings of the Pharisees, the Sadducces, and Herod as being leaven (Matt. 16: 5-12; Mark 8: 15; Luke 12: 1).

 

 

(i) The Pharisees.  Christ particularized the leaven of the Pharisees as being hypocrisy.  This answers to leaven in that it works secretly and insidiously, depraving the heart.  By it the whole life is corrupted and is vitiated before God.  Christ’s usage of the term hypocrisy is most searching and instructive.

 

 

(a) The hypocrite loves the external, the present, and the praise of men; to be reckoned pious; to gain which status and esteem he will mask himself in false guise. Matt. 6: 2, 5-18.

 

 

(b) The hypocrite is keen to notice any tiny defect in another (the mote in his, eye), and is conceited enough to think he can put him right; but he ignores his own serious errors (the beam).  Matt. 7: 5; Luke 6: 42.

 

 

(c) The hypocrite can understand the natural but not the spiritual: the changes of the weather he can discern, to the providential orderings of God he is blind.  Luke 12: 56.

 

 

(d) The hypocrite is religious enough, but his religion is external and is governed by the traditions of men, though these make void the Word of God.  Therefore, though they honour God with their lips, and maintain the forms of worship, it is all in vain, for their heart is far from Him.  Therefore the defilements which work as leaven in the heart break forth in life.  Matt. 15: 1-20; Mark 7: 1-23.

 

 

(e) The hypocrite will demean himself so deeply as to feign to be righteous that he may, if possible, entangle and trip up the truly righteous.  Matt. 22: 15-22; Mark 12: 13-17; Luke 20: 19-26.

 

 

(f) Matt. 23.  The hypocrite’s hostility to the kingdom of God is such that

 

 

i. (ver. 13) He will not enter therein himself, nor submit to be ruled by God and His Word, but rather to the utmost of his power he will prevent others from entering.

 

 

ii. (ver. 15) He is eager and energetic to gain followers to his party, and lends his whole influence to making them more satanic than even himself. Satan is the chief Hypocrite of the universe, and these, filled with his deceit, do his fell work.

 

 

iii. (vers. 23, 24) The hypocrite scrupulously insists upon obedience to the minor matters of the law, but despises its inner spirit and weightier demands: he strains out the gnat and gulps down the camel.

 

 

iv. (ver. 25) He insists that external practice ought to be as clean as the outside of a polished vessel.  Granted this, then the secret practice of the hypocrite may be one of extortion and other signs of a life without moral restraint.

 

 

v. (ver. 27) Thus he is like a whitened sepulchre - outwardly adorned, inwardly corrupt and loathsome.

 

 

vi. (ver. 29) They profess to repudiate the crimes of their forbears, but show themselves in reality to be their true sons by completing their iniquities, and thus they display their true nature to be that of the Devil, as “serpents” and an “offspring of vipers  Thus did the Lord repronounce their condemnation by John and warn them that they were assuring their own doom in the fires of Gehenna.*

 

* Of the Pharisees as a class older scholars held the severe view that is the apparent force of the Gospel narratives.  See e.g. Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah.  Some more recent scholars considerably modify this opinion. See H. L. Ellison, Jesus and The Pharisees (The Victoria Institute).  We are not required to regard them as sinners above all that dwelt in Jerusalem; indeed, as regards their evil teaching and influence, the Lord classed that of the Sadducees and Herodians as equally leaven.  But this groups all as equally bad. Certainly the Gospels paint them all in dark colours.  Yet doubtless there were individual exceptions, and their moral state may have varied at different periods.  For the main purpose of this present study the chief point is not the general condition of the three sects, but rather the character and effect of leaven, their doctrines.  Of this there is no Scriptural mitigation.

 

 

This is the detail picture of leaven as given by the Utterer of our parable.  We shall illustrate it when treating of the Woman who hid it in the meal.  It is enough now to observe that the spring out of which this polluted and polluting stream rose was the afore-mentioned insubordinate attitude to the will of God declared in His Word. While sitting on Moses’ seat they made void his law.

 

 

(ii) The Sadducees.  Though this second dominant party in Jewry was in general conflict with the Pharisees, its teaching was equally “leaven  They denied the existence of angels or other spirit beings, as well as any resurrection of the dead (Acts 23: 8).  This was virtual atheism, since God is spirit.  Consequently, though they formally admitted His right to be worshipped, they disallowed any real foreordination by Him and magnified the will of man as the only determining factor, thus virtually and practically eliminating God.  They were the then “humanists  Their denial of a resurrection wholly set aside future punishments and rewards and left the present as the sole affair for man’s attention.  They were the Jewish materialists of their day.

 

 

(iii) Herod. Matt. 14: 1-12; Mark 6: 14-29; Luke 3: 18-20; 9: 7-9; 23: 7-12.  Every man has influence, every king special influence.  There was that about Herod Antipas which caused the Lord Jesus to compare him to leaven.  His own disciples were in danger of being infected by this leaven and needed to be warned against it.  This leaven Christ distinguished from that of the Pharisees: “Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” (Mark 8: 14, 15).

 

 

We need not go to Josephus to learn of the influence of Herod.  The few notices in the Gospels will indicate the nature of his leaven.

 

 

(a) He was licentious: he had induced the wife of his own brother to marry him.

 

 

(b) He was revengeful and vindictive.  John the Baptist had faithfully reproved him for this immorality, and he had first imprisoned and later murdered him, though he recognized him as being righteous and holy.

 

 

(c) He was crafty and therefore deceitful.  This the Lord indicated by calling him a fox (Luke 13: 31-33).  Herod had heard of Jesus, and would like to have seen one so famous work a miracle (Luke 23: 8).  But this Rabbi was popular with Herod’s own subjects and might be dangerous.  They had once intended to make him a king (John 6: 15).  He would fain have killed Jesus, but perhaps he did not want to incur the public odium of murdering another prophet.  Yet he let it be known that he was planning this crime, possibly thinking that the dangerous Teacher and Leader would quietly save him trouble by withdrawing beyond his borders.  Those equal hypocrites, the Pharisees, served his purpose by advising Jesus to disappear lest Herod should carry out his threat.

 

 

(d) Like other vile, unprincipled, unscrupulous men Herod was superstitious.  The foul murder of John rankled in his memory and he jumped to the conclusion that Jesus must be John resuscitated.  Conscience made him a coward.

 

 

The influence of such a sovereign could not but leaven his court and kingdom, aggravating the general debasement.  There was a substantial party who supported him - the Herodians, and these were infected with his craftiness and joined the Pharisees in a base attempt to entrap Christ and embroil Him with the Roman governor to His undoing (Matt. 22: 16).

 

 

Thus leaven stands in the Gospels

for that of the Pharisees - hypocritical formalism,

that of the Sadducees - rationalistic materialism,

that of Herod - debasing sensualism.

 

 

All this appears afresh in the figurative use of leaven by the apostle Paul.  It is he who affirms that Christians “ought to remember the words of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 20: 35).  If, then, the Lord had, in the parable before us, used leaven as a type of good, Paul does not seem to have remembered this.  He is the only other New Testament writer who uses the figure and in each place it pictures evil.

 

 

Gal. 5: 9.  It is fairly clear that he knew of this parable for he almost reproduces Christ’s phrase “until it was all (wholly, holon) leavened saying, “a little leaven leaveneth the whole (holon) lump  The leaven which had been put into the minds of these Galatian believers was that of the Pharisees, even a formal keeping of the law as to circumcision being made needful unto salvation.

 

 

This was a thorough perversion of the true doctrine of justification by grace through faith, on the ground of the blood of Christ.  If allowed to work, this leaven of error would corrupt the whole body of Christian and saving truth.  This is equally the case with such doctrines as that baptism, or the keeping of the seventh day Sabbath, or any other work is necessary to salvation.

 

 

1 Cor. 5: 6-8.  Here again Paul warns believers against the pervasive influence of evil, repeating that “a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump  At Corinth it was particularly the leaven of Herod: sensuality was among them by an unholy marital alliance, as in the case of Herod: and the rest were tolerating it, with the danger that all of them might succumb to passion and lust.

 

 

But not only “wickedness the passions of the body, were in question, there was also at work “malice a readiness, on the one hand, to defraud another, and, on the other hand, a readiness for the defrauded to seek vengeance at the hand of the law (ch. 6).  This hard spirit also could presently infect them all, and mercy and love fail.  Biting and devouring one another, Christians can consume one another.  It was the spirit of Herod and the Herodians, ready to slay the obnoxious Teacher of truth and holiness.

 

 

Then also among the Corinthians there was the leaven of the Sadducees, the denial of resurrection, the doctrine of annihilation (ch. 15).  The apostle laboured to show that this was a complete denial of the Christian faith, destructive at once of salvation and holiness.  He urged that “evil communications corrupt good manners an instance of leaven at work, and that the practical effect of the teaching was concentration on the present life and its bodily indulgences: “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die

 

 

In this place also Paul’s statement corresponds remarkably with that which Christ said to the Sadducees upon this same subject of resurrection, namely, that “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Luke 20: 38). In both contexts “die” and “dead” are used in the sense of the sceptics being answered, that is, non-existence.  Not even God can be the God of what does not exist.  These are the only places where the word death is allowed this meaning, and in these only for the meaning to be expressly repudiated.

 

 

 

The facts as to the symbolic meaning of leaven are:

 

 

I.  That the Old Testament usage is uniformly of evil.

 

 

II. This parable seems to be the first occasion when the Lord spoke of leaven.  On each later occasion He used it unmistakably as a symbol of evil.  Even if they had no other guidance, how could the apostles have understood that first use otherwise than in the light of the uniform earlier and later usage?

 

 

III. That His inspired and commissioned apostle, the chief teacher of Christian doctrine, used leaven only as a symbol of evil.

 

 

IV. That if upon that first occasion the Lord meant leaven to typify a holy influence by which all mankind would ultimately be renewed, leading up to His own return and reign, then He flatly contradicted His own outlook, and His teaching given at the same time.  For it is not to be denied that the parable of the darnel pictures this evil plant as continuing in the field alongside of the good plant, the wheat, right up to the consummation of the age, and only to be removed by the agency of the angels whom He, at His parousia, will send forth as reapers.  And it is equally beyond denial that the parable of the drag-net gives exactly the same picture of the close of this age - good and bad fish in the net together, only to be separated by the angels.

 

 

As it is impossible that the Son of God should have contradicted Himself, leaven must represent an insidious influence that should enter the kingdom of heaven and work corruption.

 

 

It is only the preconceived and unwarranted notion that the gospel is at last to save the world at large in this age that calls for the unfounded and contradictory view that the mustard tree and the leaven represent a normal and good process.  By this view these parables are forced into irreconcilable conflict with the teaching of the whole Word of God upon both the symbolic use of leaven and of the character and condition of the end of the present age.

 

 

2. The Meal.

 

 

Leaven therefore represents evil teachings which produce corrupt practice: “Then understood they that He bade them ... beware ... of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Matt. 16: 12).

 

 

What, then, is the meal in which the leaven works?  It must be something congruous in its nature to leaven. Leaven will not affect iron or stone, their nature being incongruous to it.  The leaven used in fermenting bread is yeast, which is a plant, and therefore acts upon wheat which is also the product of a plant.  It follows that “meal” points to something congruous to “leaven and the latter being “teaching” the former must be “teaching  Therefore the meaning is false doctrine corrupting sound doctrine, error spoiling truth.

 

 

But the meal the woman took was the staple food of the household, its staff of life.  Thus Sarah made cakes from three measures of meal for the guests who had come to Abraham.*

 

* With this instance in mind no fanciful meaning need be sought for the measures being three in number.  Apparently it was the quantity normally used and would be the natural amount to mention.

 

 

What, then, is the staff of life in the realm of the spirit?  Let Jeremiah answer.  Of the finding of the book of the law he says: “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and Thy words were unto me a joy and the rejoicing of my heart” (Jer. 15: 16; 2 Chron. 34: 14-16).  Let the Lord Jesus answer by His words: “I am the bread of life ... he that eateth Me he also shall live because of Me and “the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life” (John 6: 48, 57, 63).

 

 

Therefore “meal” typifies God’s word written and God’s word Personal, which two are one, the Person, the Living Word, being the subject and energy of the written Word.  Therefore “leaven” is such error as negatives the truth and influence of the written word of God concerning the Son of God: which indeed includes all subordinate truths, for Christ could say, “I am the truth” (John 14: 6), and it was all one to say “the Spirit of truth shall guide you into all the truth” or to say “He shall take of Mine and declare it unto you” (John 16: 13, 14).

 

 

This, then, is the true meal, the true staff of life, Christ revealed and appropriated in Scripture; and “man doth not live by [material] bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4: 4); for, as we saw when considering the new birth unto eternal life, the words of God are both living and life-giving.

 

 

Of course, all earthly illustrations fail in some point or degree.  This lies in the imperfectness of things earthly. Here enters the importance of taking statements strictly, and also limiting the illustration to the exact point illustrated.  It is not that truth, like meal, can in itself be corrupted.  This is not what is said, but that, in the outward development of the kingdom of God in this age, one phase will be a corruption produced by error being subtly mixed with truth, false doctrine combined with true doctrine, issuing in perversion of mind and corruption of practice.

 

 

This enforces the principle of interpretation that the whole picture is what represents the kingdom of heaven, not its features separately.  The kingdom of God is not itself like leaven, nor like soured dough, but a phase of its development is represented by the action of leaven upon dough.

 

 

3. The Woman.

 

 

The outworking of this forecast can be traced in the arising of that depraved clerical system which has debased before men the honourable name of Christian.  For in the typology of Scripture a “woman” represents a system, either political or religious, or both in combination.

 

 

(1) The peoples of Israel and Judah, under the name of their respective capitals, Jerusalem and Samaria, are spoken of as two sisters (Ezek. 16), and their unfaithfulness to their God is represented as adultery.

 

 

(2) In the Revelation the heavenly company, formed of some of the redeemed from the earth, is portrayed as a woman (ch. 12), and later is shown as the Bride, the wife of the Lamb (ch. 21).

 

 

(3) In the same book there is a woman corrupting the church in Thyatira to whom is given the name “Jezebel Her full-length portrait is drawn in ch. 17 as the Harlot Church whose origin, character, and doom are connected with the city Babylon.

 

 

This “Jezebel” is the “woman” who, more than all others, inserted the leaven into the meal.  She is older and larger than the Roman Catholic Church, though this is her present chief realm.

 

 

The ancient Jezebel, wife of Ahab and queen of Israel, had been the vile, cruel corrupter of Israel, by instructing them, through her prophets, in the false doctrines and vile practices of the worship of Baal (1 Kings 16 to 22).  Her successor in the smaller sphere of the church at Thyatira was doing the same work by the same methods - she was calling herself a prophetess, that is, a divinely commissioned teacher, was spreading false teaching, and was leading the way in corrupt practice.

 

 

The old Jezebel was a typical, concentrated example of the paganism that originated in Babylon after the Flood and rapidly corrupted men’s minds with false philosophies, perverting the truth which men then knew as to God and creation, heaven and earth, time and eternity (Rom. 1: 18-32).

 

 

That Babylon and its system of life had been itself pictured as a “woman” (Jer. 50: 42; 51: 2, 3, 7; etc.), even as the New Testament pictures its successor, or perhaps it should be described more accurately as its continuator.  For the great Confederated Church that in the early centuries posed as Christian was in all essential respects the same system of religion and politics that had before been avowedly pagan.

 

 

The inserting of error into the true apostolic doctrine and practice was done with truly satanic subtlety, and sometimes by men in the system who, one would believe, had as individuals no perception of what they were doing.  For example:

 

 

(1) In the local churches as left by the apostles the rulership was exercised by a plurality of elders in each assembly (Acts 14: 23; 20: 17; Phil. 1: 1; 1 Cor. 16: 15, 16; 1 Thess. 5: 12-14; 1 Tim. 5: 17; 1 Pet. 5: 1).  But the last of the apostles had been but recently taken when, early in the second century, the martyr bishop of Antioch, Ignatius, commenced the exalting and lauding of one bishop in each church as the honourable representative of Christ in that church.  In due time the leaven worked widely until churches everywhere were dominated by a single elder in each.

 

 

(2) As the apostles left the churches each was an administrative unit, depending directly upon the Head in heaven, acting by His Spirit on earth.  There was no visible union of the churches.  The bond between believers was spiritual only, that of a common faith and a mutual love.

 

 

In that same second century these single bishops in each church began to meet for consultation of the affairs in their particular districts.  At first their consultations resulted only in recommendations, and each bishop and church acted on these only when they saw good.  But in due time recommendations stiffened into rulings, and local churches which did not submit could be excommunicated, as were the Donatists in North Africa in the fourth century.

 

 

(3) By this time all the churches that assented to these developments had been federated into the State Church, and then the false doctrine was spread that outside of that Church there was no salvation.  This corrupted the truth that no person becomes a member of God’s church until he has first experienced the new birth and so is already saved, and it led to salvation being made to depend on baptism, by which one “joined the Church

 

 

(4) In apostolic days it was persons already professing faith unto salvation who alone were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.  The second century saw the entrance of the unscriptural practice of baptizing infants, to which was soon added the deceit that by this baptism first children, and later adults, became regenerate and members of the church.  By consequence it followed later that clerics who administered baptism taught that without baptism children died in sin and were lost for ever.  By this cruel chain this false baptism was riveted upon the generality of professors, to the exaltation of the clerics.

 

 

This leaven spread throughout the whole Confederate Church, and it still works its fatal corruption in various systems that broke from the Church of Rome at the Reformation.  Probably more professing Christians have died in their sins by accepting this one lie of regeneration by baptism than from any other error.

 

 

(5) In the first days the Supper of the Lord was simply a feast of remembrance.  The eating and drinking set forth that inward participation of Christ by faith which makes Him our spiritual life.  This was perverted by the leaven that the elements used in the Supper are themselves the transmitting medium of the spiritual grace.  This led on to the utterly false assertion that the consecrating priest effects the transubstantiation of the physical elements into the actual body and blood of the Lord, and to the additional falsehood that only by partaking of these consecrated elements can Christ be appropriated and salvation be maintained.

 

 

(6) But who has adequate power to effect this wondrous change of the bread into the veritable body of the glorified Lord?  This involved the attribution to the consecrating cleric of a priestly office conferred by his consecration by the bishop, and it further involves the falsity of his being a sacrificing priest, an official wholly unknown to the New Testament.

 

 

And how does a bishop acquire right and power to endow a priest with these miraculous powers of regenerating a sinner by baptism and then of turning bread into Christ and feeding the partaker unto eternal life?  The answer is offered in the figment of the Chief Bishop, the Pope of Rome, having derived his authority to consecrate by succession from Peter the apostle.

 

 

(7) And all this mixture of error with truth involves the denial of the sufficiency and finality of the atoning death of the Son of God to secure salvation for him who truly repents and believes.  And it mixes works and sacraments with faith as the means of appropriation by the believer of the grace of God, and thus vitiates both faith and grace (Rom. 4).

 

 

Thus from the small grain of leaven, the elevating of one elder above the rest of the brethren, there developed the vast hierarchical system of the Papacy, with its corruption in doctrine and its depraved practice: and what passed as the kingdom of God on earth was actually a system in which Babylonian Jezebel had seated herself in the church and seduced even servants of the Lord to commit fornication, and eat things sacrificed to idols. For the “saints” whose images were set up for veneration were too often but pagan idols with new names.

 

 

In most of the great church histories an effect of the leaven is shown in this feature, that the doings and doctrines of this Jezebel, the Confederated Church, are narrated as being the history of the church of God.  As I wrote long years ago regarding this great Woman in her final development as the Harlot of Rev. 17:

 

 

Let us not mistake the situation that will thus arise.  This gigantic conglomeration of sects is Christless in all but name: it does not by any right or means really represent the church of the living God of which the rejected Son of God is at once Founder and Foundation.  In obscure spots the lowly herb still flourishes, though amidst storms; the little flock still waits on the Great Shepherd: the house of God has not been razed; the gates of Hades have not prevailed.

 

 

The true outlook on the history of this true church is set forth admirably in E. H. Broadbent’s The Pilgrim Church (Pickering & Inglis, Ltd.).  He shows that all the centuries through the true pilgrim church has been those who broke away from the Woman and took the Word of God as their rule, instead of tradition, and therefore were persecuted by Jezebel.

 

 

The inquiring reader can pursue the subject of the growth and character of the Confederated Church in Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire; Charles Reade, the Cloister and the Hearth, ch. LXXIV; Hatch, The Organisation of the Early Christian Churches; Hislop, The Two Babylons; Pember, The Church, the Churches, and the Mysteries, and Mystery Babylon the Great and the Mysteries and Catholicism.

 

 

 

Before leaving this parable we will consider a few more instances of the hiding of leaven in the meal by this Woman.

 

 

(8) The Godhead.  The Catholic creed avows the orthodox doctrine of the trinity of Persons in the one God. In practice, however, the glorification of Mary makes her the chief object of devotion.  In the first period of the Confederated Church the East and the West sections were one body.  The Coptic Church of Egypt is a branch of the Eastern section.  In its liturgy there is a passage in which Mary actually stands between the Father and the Son as an object of invocation.  Thus was idolatrous error interwoven with the truth.

 

 

(9) Atonement.  The Church avows that the sacrificial death of Christ is indispensable to our salvation; but this is vitiated by the doctrine that this salvation is obtained through the sacraments, and these require the priest for effectual administration.  Liberty of direct access to God through Christ is thus set aside.

 

 

(10) The Catholic creed admits the Divine origin of the Old and New Testaments, but this is corrupted by the recognition of the Apocrypha also.  Moreover, before the official Catholic creed admits the Holy Scriptures it requires the avowal of a steadfast assent to and acceptance of alleged apostolic traditions.  And to the acknowledgment of the Scriptures the promise is appended not to interpret them save according to the unanimous consent of the Church Fathers.  As these in fact are not unanimous on doctrine no interpretation of Scripture by the individual Catholic is possible.  Thus does leaven vitiate the meal.  Tradition is made the more important, and the Word of God is made of none effect.

 

 

(11) Purgatory.  In my commentary on Hebrews it is shown (ch. 13) that Scripture warns that an unsanctified believer is liable to the parental chastisement of God after death, with a view to his being fitted for the Millennial kingdom.  To this salutary teaching the Catholic Church adds the fundamental error that this purification is necessary to final salvation whereas the blessed truth is that this is dependent solely upon the atoning death of Christ relied upon by faith.

 

 

To false doctrine on this matter the Church then appends the further falsity that its priests can help the sufferer through and out of purgatory by their masses, thus greatly strengthening the grip of the priests on their dupes and their money.

 

 

(12) The Assumption of Mary.  On p. 187 of the commentary on Hebrews mentioned it is said:

 

 

It is worth deep and full inquiry whether it be not the case that the whole system of Roman theology, and each dogma separately, has some element of truth at its heart, truth perverted and corrupted, but there.  It is to be doubted whether any one of those dogmas is undiluted error.  That Church has been pre-eminently the woman that has hid the leaven of error in the meal of truth; but the meal is there.

 

If this is so, it is to be expected that in even their doctrine of purgatory there is an element of truth.

 

 

Here is a theme worthy of some competent evangelical theologian and historian.

 

 

A reviewer remarked upon the paragraph just quoted that “there is true insight here, but the statement goes too far: what element of truth lies at the heart (for example) of the latest Dogma, that of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

 

 

The answer affords a useful illustration of the feature here discussed.

 

 

The history of this dogma begins with an early legend that almost immediately after the death of Mary Christ appeared, with His angels, and caused her soul to be reunited with her body and she was carried to heaven.

 

 

The legend appeared in the third century and was attributed to Gnostic or Collyridian heretics.  The latter worshipped the Virgin Mary as a goddess and offered to her cakes as a sacrifice.  The book that preserved this story was for a while rejected by the Church and was officially condemned as heretical by a Decretum attributed to Pope Gelasius A.D. 494.  By a series of forgeries in the names of John the Apostle, Melito, Athanasius, Jerome, and Augustine, and further by the adoption of the Gnostic legend by some accredited teachers, writers, and liturgies, it became accepted by the Church in centuries 6, 7, and 9 (see Smith’s Dict. of Christian Antiquities, ii, 1142, 1143).  But it remained only a “pious tradition” [which nevertheless ought to be accepted] down to A.D. 1950, when it was exalted to being a Dogma which the faithful are bound to believe at peril of the soul.

 

 

Here is a clear denial of the Dogma of Papal Infallibility, for what was condemned as heretical in 494 was affirmed as Divine truth in 1950.

 

 

Thus the lowly Mary, the mother of Jesus, and of His brothers and sisters (Mark 3: 31; 6: 3; John 2: 3-5; Gal. 1: 19), was metamorphosed into the Perpetual Virgin and impiously exalted to be the Queen of Heaven with the blasphemies which are attached to her, as in the instance cited above where she is placed between the Father and the Son in adoration, and as when she is set forth as the tender-hearted Intercessor, who pleads for sinners at the hands of her harsh and unwilling Son.

 

 

Thus the pagan Queen of Heaven, as owned at first by the heretical Collyridians, was adopted by the Confederate Church at large when it had become paganized as the Church of the Empire.

 

 

The reader may think the reviewer justified in questioning whether there can be any element of truth in this blasphemy.  Yet going back to the original form of the legend, its essence is this: That immediately after Mary’s death, by a descent of the Lord from heaven with His angels, her body was re-quickened by reunion with her soul, brought from Paradise, and she was then translated to the heavens.  Now this is precisely what is to occur to Mary at the descent of the Lord from heaven with the angels of His power, and to all other believers accounted to attain to that coming age and the resurrection from amongst the dead (1 Thess 4: 16, 17; 1 Cor. 15: 50 ff.; Luke 20: 35).

 

 

The error mingled with the truth was that the event had already taken place on the case of Mary, and this paved the way for the disastrous corruptions mentioned.

 

 

If the apostles had taught the early church that all believers go to heaven at [the time of thair] death this would of necessity have applied to Mary and there would have been neither need nor room for inventing a special legend so as to get her there.  The fact of the legend about her in particular shows that the apostles had not so taught.

 

 

(13) The Place of Dead Saints.  Let it now be much observed that, according to the legend, Mary’s soul did not at death go to heaven above, but was carried by angelic agency to Paradise.  This shows that down to that time (cent. 4) it was held that believers at death went where Lazarus went at his death and by the same angelic agency: “he was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16: 22).  This was the current description of Paradise - the sphere of the pious dead, and it was thither that the Lord and the penitent thief went at death (Luke 23: 43; Eph. 4: 9).  I find not a word of Scripture to suggest that the godly dead have ever gone to any other place, yet the unfounded idea is general that Christ at His resurrection took from Paradise all believers, removed them to heaven, and that consequently ever since then believers have gone to heaven at [the time of their] death.

 

 

Upon this the learned Bishop Pearson, in his monumental treatise on The Creed, writes on Article V as follows:

 

 

This hath been in the later ages of the church the vulgar opinion of most men ... But even this opinion, as general as it hath been, hath neither that consent of antiquity, nor such certainty as it pretendeth. ... The most ancient of all the fathers, whose writings are extant, were so far from believing that the end of Christ’s descent into hell [ i.e.‘Hades’] was to translate the saints of old into heaven, that they thought them not to be in heaven yet, nor ever to be removed from that place in which they were before Christ’s death, until the general resurrection. ... Indeed, I think there were very few (if any) for above five hundred years after Christ, who did so believe Christ delivered the saints out of hell [‘Hades’], as to leave all the damned there; therefore this opinion cannot be grounded upon the prime antiquity, when so many of the ancients believed not they were removed at all, and so few acknowledged that they were removed alone. ... But there is no certainty that the patriarchs and the prophets are now in another place and a better condition than they were before our blessed Saviour died; there is no intimation of any such alteration of their state delivered in the scriptures there is no such place with any probability pretended to prove any actual accession of happiness and glory already past.*

 

* Griffith Thomas’ discussion in The Principles of Theology (66-72) I feel to be inadequate and faulty.  It is to be remembered that Pearson uses “hell” in its older sense of hades, the place of the dead [in the underworld], not in its present common sense of final punishment, the lake of fire.

 

 

This opinion that believers at death go to heaven and glory is worse in its nature than the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary.  That doctrine did at least include the resurrection of the body as prerequisite to ascent to heaven, this other opinion dispenses with resurrection as a preliminary to translation, to the presence of God.  In this particular the one was scriptural, the other is unscriptural; and in scope of influence the latter is the larger error, for the one applied to Mary alone, the other affects myriads of believers.

 

 

The practical effect is to make resurrection unnecessary, for the saint has already reached the goal and the highest state possible, the glory of God.* In essence this is much the same as the error of Hymenaeus and Philetus, that “resurrection is past already and its moral effect is similar, even to diminish faith as regards a living expectation of [a] resurrection [of reward] at the coming of the Lord, even in those who sincerely aver belief in the last doctrine.

 

* I understand that William Tyndale urged this argument against the Catholic, Sir T. More, who asserted that Christians go to heaven at death (Reply to Sir. T. More, Ch. VIII, 118).

 

Now that which lessens in the [regenerate] Christian the keen desire for the coming of the Lord [to personally establish His Messianic Kingdom and righteous Rule upon and over this earth] is injurious.  It works alongside of the error that the church is to convert the world in this age, which error gained ground at the same time that the hope of the Lord’s return [and millennial reign] ceased to be generally held by Christians.

 

 

(14) The Sovereignty of the Saints.  Scripture teaches that it is the purpose of God that Christ shall be King over all the earth (Ps. 2; Dan. 7: 13, 14; Matt. 25: 31; etc.).  Included in that purpose is the plan that those who will form the church of the firstborn ones, those who conquered in the present wars of the Lord, shall share the sovereignty and glory of Christ (Matt. 19: 28; Luke 22: 28-30; 1 Cor. 6: 2, 3; Rev. 2: 25-28; 3: 21; etc.).

 

 

This high prospect the Confederated Church accepted; but when that Church was adopted and honoured by the State, and the expectation of the return of Christ faded away, error was added to this truth also.  The truth was retained; but even as the translation of Mary was brought forward into this age, and no longer deferred to the first resurrection at the coming of the Lord. so was the temporal rule of the saints brought forward and it was taught that the Church ought to rule the world now.  It matters nothing that Paul had reproved the believers at Corinth for “reigning,” as if this were the period for the saints to do so (1 Cor. 4: 8).  The City of God must be built here and now, without the personal presence of the King.

 

 

Out of this perverse and ill-timed application of the truth grew the rank and poisonous weed of Papal Supremacy.  The Pope claimed to be king of kings, lord over all rulers and peoples, and to have authority to depose sovereigns and absolve a king’s subjects from their due allegiance to him.  As Vice-regent for Christ it was his to live in more than royal splendour and luxury.

 

 

This corrupt and civilly corrupting leaven, this evil political theory, is still held firmly by that Church, and is yet to be realized when the Harlot Church shall for a short time sit on and direct the Scarlet-coloured political Beast, the kingdom of Antichrist (Rev. 17).

 

 

Annually, in mock imitation of the blessed Lord having washed the feet of the apostles, the Pope washes the feet of twelve beggars.  But, as Bengel said, it would show more true humility were he to wash the feet of one king.

 

 

The blessed hope of the return of the Lord was a vital part of apostolic doctrine.  Whatever diminishes it in the heart of the believer is of the nature of leaven, a corrupting of truth by an admixture of error.  Here each who abhors the Woman has to fear and watch lest he help her to spread leaven.  The Roman Church is not the only agency that has done this work of the Evil One.

 

 

These instances of the work of the Woman and the leaven against the truth will suffice.  The serious lesson of the parable is that this process having early commenced in the sphere of the kingdom of heaven will continue to work until the consummation of the age, so that the coming Lord has Himself raised the question whether “when the Son of man cometh shall He find the faith on the earth?” (Luke 18: 8).

 

 

Parable Six: THE HIDDEN TREASURE

 

Matt. 13: 44

 

 

Confusion of the church with the kingdom has greatly dark­ened the exposition of this parable.

 

 

To some the church is the treasure, Christ the Man who found it and who gave His all to acquire it, by buying the world in which it lay hidden.

 

 

But the church of God was chosen before the world was founded and Christ was the One in association with Whom that choice was made (Eph. 1: 4).  How, then, could the Son of God be ignorant of its existence and happen upon it casually while busy in this world about other things?  The church already existed in His and the Father’s joint counsels, and the Son knew that to Himself the Father had given its members (John 17: 6).

 

 

Others suggest that the church is the treasure hidden in the mass of mankind, and that the inquiring soul learns of this church and its privileges, desires them, and surrenders all he has to gain a share in the church.  But is the society known as the church so completely hidden that one knows nothing of its existence till he happens on it accidentally?

 

 

Another says that the truth of God is the treasure, that it is greatly hidden by its association with errors as held by various sects, as the treasure was hidden in the field, but that when a person makes the discovery of truth he buys the whole field to get the treasure; that is, at whatever necessary cost he accepts the sect entire, with its opinions and ways, because there he has found the treasure.  But sectarianism is no manifestation of the kingdom of heaven of which the parable speaks.

 

 

Leaving these incongruous notions we notice that this short parable presents these features:

 

 

1. The kingdom of heaven is a treasure.

 

 

2. It is a hidden treasure.

 

 

3. It is a treasure that may be found unexpectedly.

 

 

4. It affords great joy to the finder.

 

 

5. It will cost him all that he has to acquire it.

 

 

The kingdom of God and heaven is that realm of existence in which the authority of God is owned and the holiness and happiness of heaven are enjoyed.  This can be the inward experience of the believer now; it will become the general condition of life in the age to come.  Inasmuch as the kingdom is said to be already like this treasure it must be the present aspect that is primarily in view.  Yet the present is a foretaste of the future.

 

 

The features above indicated are seen in the case of Abraham, our spiritual father.  He lived in an earthly kingdom of splendour and power, but the kingdom of God with its reality and glory was hidden from him. Unexpectedly by him the God of glory revealed Himself to Abram and made overtures to him to enter His kingdom (Acts 7: 1-3).  Shown in advance the day of Christ, Abram, rejoiced and was glad.  But to enter that blessed kingdom, and gain possession of what was offered and promised, had [to be prepared, when called to do so] - to sacrifice all, including country, kindred, and even his immediate relatives.

 

 

The same features are seen in Moses.  He had princely rank in the greatest kingdom of his day.  He was powerful, highly educated, wealthy; but of the kingdom of heaven he knew nothing.  He knew that the race to which he belonged by birth had a different god to those of Egypt (Acts 7: 25), but neither he nor they knew so much as His name (Ex. 3: 13).  But quite unexpectedly, while he was about his usual work as a desert shepherd, God appeared to him, and appointed him to service in His divine kingdom.  Like Abraham he too was shown the coming triumph of the kingdom of God and Christ (Heb. 11: 25, 26), and in the joy of that recompense of reward he forsook all to follow the heavenly light.

 

 

It was thus with the eleven apostles.  They knew in their heads more than Abram or Moses had known when called of God, but of the kingdom of heaven as a present reality they were ignorant.  But the Prophet from Nazareth passed their way; John the Baptist drew their attention to Him; they heard Him teach as to the kingdom; in an ecstasy of joy one of them goes to find his friend to announce the wondrous news, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, wrote” (John 1: 45).  Later one of them told the price they had paid: “Lo, we have left all and followed Thee” (Matt. 19: 27).

 

 

It was the same with Saul of Tarsus. Well born, well educated, a man of means and leisure, he lived for the world of Jewry, outside the kingdom of heaven, carrying out his own thoughts, not the will of God (Acts 26: 9).  But suddenly, on the open road to Damascus, the Lord of the Kingdom shone upon him, captivated him, apprehended him as a willing prisoner (Phil. 3: 12), and appointed him to high and dangerous service in His heavenly kingdom.  In the joy and power thus received he too “suffered the loss of all things” and thought nothing of the sacrifice (Phil. 3: 8).

 

 

A Catholic monk, his spirit burdened with a sense of sin, knew naught of the freedom of the kingdom of God and Christ.  But the unexpected happened in that a monastic superior recommended him to read and believe the Bible.  Ere long he passed out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of God.  The joy and vigour of Martin Luther shook Europe; but it cost him all that he had before esteemed.

 

 

The dark ages saw countless fulfilments of this parable of the kingdom of God, especially during the dreary stretches when the Woman could make herself drunk with the blood of the saints (Rev. 17: 6), and treat the reading of God’s Word as a capital crime.  It must needs be so again when she will again control the civil power, as that chapter foretells, and when “darkness shall cover the earth and gross darkness the peoples” (Isa. 60: 2).

 

 

That behind this accidental finding of the treasure there lies an activity of the Divine grace and guidance is blessedly true, but this potent factor is not introduced into the parable, because the Teacher wished to emphasize the human and outward aspect of the kingdom.

 

 

It is to be observed that the Lord does not say that this parable shows the terms upon which a sinner may find pardon and peace.  That priceless boon may be reached by the process and at the cost indicated; yet many have gained peace with God without it.  Children reared in Christian homes are often instances of finding life without such drastic and costly experiences.  The Lord is talking of the kingdom of heaven* and of one phase it will display in this age.  Now to know the power of that kingdom, to be a thorough disciple of its King, the cost is always as here indicated and nothing less.   Justification and eternal life are unconditional gifts of grace (Rom. 3: 24; 6: 23), but discipleship, with all its high privileges and noble prospects, is costly.  No one can be a disciple of Christ who does not give Him the absolute preference over the dearest relatives, as Abraham did. None can follow Christ who does not bear his own cross, for Jesus bore His.  The cross is the rugged instrument of death to self.  “I have been crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2: 20).  No one can be Christ’s disciple who does not renounce the title to all that he possesseth, for Christ renounced all that He possessed to do the will of God on earth (2 Cor. 8: 9; Phil. 2: 5-8).

 

[* Note the words “kingdom of heaven”: it is not a “kingdom in heaven,” as so many believers seem to imagine!  The author is not speaking here of Christ’s eternal kingdom “in a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21: 1), after this earth is destroyed by fire!]

 

 

Thus the application of this parable goes beyond the first finding of [eternal] salvation.  Many who have gained assurance of pardon halt there, and suffer arrested spiritual development.  It is frequently so with children converted early.  The kingdom of heaven, as the true sphere of interest and activity, may not be seen for years. It is a hidden treasure.  At length a passage of Scripture suddenly illuminates the mind and challenges devotion; or a book or an address suddenly arrests attention and calls for full dedication to Christ and His interests; or some consecrated and rich spiritual life, met unexpectedly, creates a hunger for a similar experience.  It has occurred often that the price to be paid is all that has been held dear - maybe a friend, a home, a position and prospects, a fortune.

 

 

In a theological college there was a student of great grace, unction, and heavenly influence.  The Principal conversed with him and said: “I would give all I have to get what you have”; to which the reply was: “Then you may have it, sir, for that is just what it cost me

 

 

Did not the psalmist point to the essential idea the Lord presents in the parable when he wrote: “I rejoice at Thy word as one that findeth great spoil”? (Ps. 119: 162).

 

 

 

Parable Seven: THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE

 

Matt. 13: 45, 46

 

 

The meaning of this parable, as of the last, has been hidden for many by the bringing in of the church.  It is suggested that the merchant is Christ, the pearl the church, and the price paid the precious blood.

 

 

But the merchant was seeking for as many fine pearls as possible.  Are there, then, many churches of God, of which one is the choicest?  The New Testament speaks of only one church.  It is a poor picture of the Son of God that He went wandering about the world looking for churches, and only by much inquiry found the best church.

 

 

Others have suggested that it is the seeking sinner who finds the church.  But there is no such thing as finding the church of God as one complete and perfect entity like a fine pearl.  It is only being slowly gathered together, one by one, person after person, and will be a complete and glorious object only at the first resurrection.

 

 

The parable pictures:

 

 

1. A merchant.

 

 

2. He is seeking pearls.

 

 

3. He finds one unique pearl of exceptional value.

 

 

4. He parts with everything and secures it.

 

 

A main lesson here, as of the last parable, is the cost of acquirement; but there are differences and these are the more significant matters.

 

 

In that parable the finder did not know the treasure existed and learned of it unexpectedly.  In this, the merchant knows that there are goodly pearls and he searches for them.  It is while so engaged that the special pearl comes before him, to his joy and enrichment.

 

 

The erroneous views mentioned are excluded by the fact that the parable does not say that the kingdom of heaven is like a pearl, let alone that the church is like a pearl; it says that the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant.

 

 

Nicodemus was a student of religious knowledge, and one of long-standing and rich acquirement or he could not have reached the position and reputation of a public Teacher or have been called to the Chief Council of the nation (John 3: 10; 7: 50).  Prosecuting his inquiries he visits the new Rabbi that had arisen and finds in Him the all-inclusive truth.

 

 

It is said that the Jews of old set small worth on pearls, in comparison with Gentiles.* If this is so, it may suggest that this phase of the kingdom would have larger fulfilment among Gentiles.  At any rate, many honest Gentiles have exhibited the features of the parable.

 

* The pearl that Cleopatra of Egypt dissolved and drank at the banquet with Mark Antony was valued at £80,000.

 

 

Justin Martyr, in the second century, “tells how he travelled through the whole circle of Greek philosophy, seeking everywhere for that which would satisfy the deepest needs of his soul, and ever seeking in vain, till he found it at length in the gospel of Christ” (Trench, 126).

 

 

Augustine (cent. 4) wandered far for satisfaction, and found it not till he could say: “Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is disquieted till it resteth in Thee” (Confessions, p. 1).

 

 

John Bunyan spent years in anxious search for peace, and found it at length in Christ crucified and glorified, as revealed in Holy Scripture.

 

 

Tersteegen wrote:

I searched for truth, I found but doubt;

I wandered far abroad:

I hail the truth already found

Within the heart of God.

 

 

In the heathen world benighted souls are met who go from shrine to shrine, from land to land, seeking truth and a purer life than they know.  They make painful pilgrimages, pay much money, do hard tasks, read much philosophy, in hope of finding truth and peace.  Sometimes they happen in this life on the treasure by seeming accident, as by a Gospel being put into the hand on a street.  Sometimes, however, in answer to their earnest inquiry, they are directed to some servant of Christ, and the pearl of saving knowledge is acquired.

 

 

We shall perhaps go beyond the strict scope of the parable if we ask as to the many such who sought but in this life did not find.  But the subject is of deep interest and importance.  Ancient heathen records reveal such seekers.  Are they not in view in Rom. 2: 1-16?  This passage deals with man as man: “0 man, whosoever thou art”; and it guarantees that “God will render to every man according to his works: to them that by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honour and incorruption, eternal life ... in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel

 

 

It is not said that they found but only that they sought something glorious, honourable, and incorruptible; and in unison with the Lord’s words that “he that seeketh findeth” (Matt. 7: 8; Luke 11: 10) the assurance is given that these seekers shall receive [at that time] eternal life.

 

 

That these in view do not receive it in this life is suggested by the statement that both those who obey not the truth and those who seek it shall each receive his recompense at the same time, namely, in the day of general judgment when the godless will be judged, that is, at the great white throne (Rev. 20: 11-15).

 

 

Of course the basis of this grant of eternal life is the redemptive work of the cross; but the warrant for granting it to these who did not in this life know of that work is that they honestly sought for incorruptibility, being dissatisfied with their corruptness.  And what they sought the God of mercy and of justice will see that [‘in the day’] they find, even as the seeker for pearls found the one pearl of great price.  God read the secret, hidden longing of the heart after truth and holiness: He knew that eternal life had been provided by Christ for all honest seekers, though they may not have heard this good news on earth: how, then, could He refuse it and so discredit the work that provided it?  A judge may see ground in law for dismissing a prisoner though he had committed the evil deed, and though he was ignorant of the law known to the judge.  Truly it is good news that God judges the secrets of all hearts, as Paul says.

 

 

The bearing of this on the parable is that such as these will enter the kingdom, and by the only process that avails, even the new birth that confers eternal life.  By faith in Christ they will know a fulfilment of John 3, as does every regenerate person.  But they will never form part of that limited company of the regenerate known as the [firstborn] church of God, for that company will have been completed and glorified at least a thousand years before these enter the [eternal] kingdom.  Here is seen the necessity of distinguishing between the kingdom in general and the church in particular.

 

 

Thus some gain truth and life by seeming accident: “Gentiles who followed not after righteousness, attained to righteousness” (Rom. 9: 30); while others gain salvation through most diligent search; and in many cases both the one and the other must pay the fullest price to secure what is a free gift of grace.  This is the paradox of Isa. 55: 1, addressed to mankind at large, and to Gentiles in particular (vers. 3-5):

 

Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

 

 

It is a free gift, yet it costs all that a man hath.  This is a part of the mysteries of the kingdom of the heavens.

 

 

 

Parable Eight: THE DRAG-NET

 

Matt. 13: 47-50

 

 

To hearts oppressed by inward disorder and helplessness, or by outward chaos and hopelessness, or by both, it verily is good news that there is a kingdom where these dire conditions are unknown, a kingdom which ruleth over all and which shall know no end.  Thus the message of the kingdom, when presented adequately, has a power to draw attention and response.

 

 

The message of God's love and mercy has a sweet attractiveness, but the message of the kingdom is presented in this parable as having compelling force; as a later parable puts it, hearers are “constrained to come in” (Luke 14: 23), even as the drag-net compels the fish caught in its meshes.

 

 

But this means that all kinds and qualities of fish are caught, those bad for food as well as those good.  This is parallel to the darnel among the wheat; and just as it was not possible to distinguish the one from the other until harvest time, so neither can the fish be distinguished until the net is drawn out of deep water on to the shore.

 

 

This repeats the lesson that the bad will continue alongside of the good all through this age and be found together at its close; for here the Lord again says distinctly that the separation will take place at the “consummation of the age” (40, 49).

 

 

There is seen here an illustration of the wrong of introducing details not given.  The scene employed, if fully worked out, would require that the fishermen handling the net would be the persons who sorted the fish, and so it has been taken (e.g. Darby, Synopsis, iii, 99).  But this is not specified, and it contradicts the parable of the darnel, for the servants were forbidden to attempt to separate it from the wheat, the bad from the good. Moreover, when the hour for the separating arrives the human servants of the Lord will have been already removed from the earth by rapture.

 

 

That the separation is deferred to the point of time indicated, the consummation of the age and the coming of the Son of man, implies what has been before noted, that the Lord’s parables of judgment at His return deal with persons found alive on earth, not with the dead; for judgment of those not accounted worthy to share the first resurrection is deferred to the close of the Millennial age and takes place before the great white throne.  That the principles of the Divine judgment are the same for all persons does not alter the fact that the times and sessions of the court of God vary.

 

 

“The angels shall come forth As yet they pass to and fro from earth to heaven, engaged in their God-appointed service of mercy or of justice, but only when a Jacob or a Gehazi is granted an open eye are they perceived.  At the hour of consummation they will not only come, as now, but come forth into open activity. These activities have been mentioned above under the parable of the darnel, as well as the fearful judgment the wicked must endure.

 

 

If the awful prospect were as vivid to us as it was to the Lord surely we would more urgently warn the wicked to turn from the error of his way.  And surely such ministry of the truth is needed within the circle of the kingdom, as well as in circles not before reached, for thus the “bad” may be changed into the “good the darnel into wheat, the wolves into sheep.  This is another of the mysteries of the kingdom, even the new birth unto eternal life; and the goodness and the longsuffering of God with this evil age are directed unto this blessed end (Rom. 2: 4; 2 Pet. 3: 9).

 

 

 

Parable Nine: THE INSTRUCTED SCRIBE

 

Matt. 13: 51, 52

 

 

“Have ye understood all these things The question implies that the Teacher expected that His pupils would have comprehended the parables, and their answer affirms that they had done so.  This should both rebuke and encourage us; for those hearers had not yet received the Spirit of truth as the indwelling Illuminator, the Guide unto all truth, yet they understood; therefore we ought to be able to understand these parables.

 

 

He who cannot do so should inquire why he is further back in spiritual intelligence than were those disciples at that earlier period before Pentecost.  Is it that he has not received the Indwelling Guide?  If so, let him do so by definite acceptance of the promise concerning His indwelling and instruction.

 

 

Or is it that he has not given the earlier teachings of the Lord, as recorded in the Gospels, that serious attention which the apostles had given?  These are the indispensable avenues of approach to the parables.  The dispensational theory that the Gospels are “Jewish” in character has caused disastrous neglect of the teachings the Lord gave, with consequent misunderstanding of the Epistles the apostles wrote, for these are founded upon what they had learned from the Lord, afterward elaborated by His Spirit.  Many who know well the letter of the Epistles know little of the Gospels, which is one reason why to them the Revelation also is a puzzle, for this is the completion of the prophecies of the Old Testament and the Gospels.

 

 

That the apostles had grasped at least the most dominant message of the parables is clear from their whole later ministry, spoken and written.  They did not expect that more than a minority of their hearers would accept their message.  Thus on the very day when they had been endued with power to witness, and might have supposed that all men would respond under the conviction and persuasion of the Spirit, Peter’s appeal was only, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation” (Acts 2: 40).  Years later James explained the work of God through them as being that “He visited the Gentiles to take out a people for His nameand that not until the Lord should return would Israel be re-established or the residue of men seek the Lord (Acts 15: 14-18).

 

 

Paul was not surprised that the words of the prophets should be fulfilled and Israelites “despise, and wonder, and perish and “judge themselves unworthy of eternal life  When they did so he turned to the Gentiles, which also he viewed as a fulfilment of prophecy (Acts 13: 40-47; 28: 24-28).  And that of the Gentiles only some would be faithful he made clear by warning them that they could be cut out of the olive tree of grace, as Israel had been (Rom. 11: 19-22).  Further, he repeated most express Spirit-given warnings that the later times of this age, the “last days so far from seeing the gospel triumph universally, would witness apostasy in the church, and grievous wickedness and opposition to the truth (1 Tim. 4: 1; 2 Tim. 3: 1-9).

 

 

Peter emphasized this by saying that “in the last days mockers shall come” (2 Pet. 3: 3).  John describes this whole age, in comparison with the vast stretch of preceding ages, as “a last hour and says, “Ye have heard that Antichrist cometh  His spirit was already in the world and many precursors had arisen in preparation for his personal advent (1 John 2: 18; 4: 3).  Of his coming Christians had heard from Paul also, and that he would only be put down by the personal appearing of Christ in glory (2 Thess. 2: 3-12).  This parousia of Antichrist and his destruction by Christ John was used to expound and depict in the Revelation (chs. 13 and 19).

 

 

Jude summarizes and emphasizes the foregoing expectation, as being the consensus of apostolic teaching, by writing, “But ye, beloved, remember ye the words which have been spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ: how that they said to you, In the last time there shall be mockers, walking after their own ungodly lusts” (vers. 17, 18).

 

 

It was in this sense that the apostles had understood the essential message of the parables, and it is not possible rightly to understand their message unless the parables are understood in the sense which they grasped and repeated.

 

 

The statement before us implies these points:

 

 

1. In the kingdom of heaven there will be scribes.  The scribe was one who, beyond the majority of people, could read and write fluently.  Probably most Jewish boys of that time could read, but only few became proficient and could write and read easily.  So he who could do this, and who gave himself diligently to learning, acquired a superior status and influence in society.

 

 

In His kingdom the Lord Jesus was and is the chief Scribe who, out of the Divine treasure of wisdom and knowledge, brought forth the truths which the Father entrusted to Him.

 

 

But He speaks of “every scribe pointing to His purpose to raise up in His kingdom other men of superior heavenly learning.  Every believer is indeed intended to have power of spiritual perception and so of increasing in the knowledge of God (Col. 1: 9; 2 Pet. 3: 18; 1 John 2: 20).  Nevertheless, and to further this end, the Lord granted to some special revelations and special gifts to impart truth (Eph. 3: 2-5; 4: 1-13; etc.).  It is foretold that such will arise at the very close of this age:  Dan. 11: 33; 12: 3.

 

 

Nor were such scribes restricted to the apostolic band: they were found in every assembly of believers, raised up and qualified by the Lord Himself 1 Cor. 16: 15, 16; 1 Thess. 5: 12, 13.  These elders were to be “apt to teachthey were to “labour in the word and teaching” (1 Tim. 3: 2; 5: 17).  Such as do so are to be esteemed exceedingly highly, to be accounted worthy of double honour, and to be obeyed by the rest of the church.

 

 

Thus scribes are a perpetual need of the people of God and a perpetual gift to them; and woe to the kingdom in any place or period when they are not found or not respected.

 

 

2. The Scribe’s Treasure.  On account of their position and authority the scribe is here compared to a householder (lit. a house-despot).  For in the Divine ideal, and largely in actual fact in the Orient, the head of the house was just that, the head of the house, with real and acknowledged authority.  And he kept under his own control his possessions, his treasured store.

 

 

To the chief Scribe, the Lord Jesus, the Father, as the inalienable Proprietor of all things, had committed all things (John 3: 35; 13: 3), and the Son could say to the Father, “all things that are Thine are Mine” (John 17: 10).  It was the “good pleasure of the Father that in the Son all the fulness should dwell” (Col. 1: 19).  It was out of this illimitable store that the Lord Jesus, when on earth, supplied His disciples, and still supplies them that learn of Him.

 

 

The means by which this continual supply is maintained differs from that initial supply to the disciples in the days of His flesh.  Then He taught them by word of mouth, and when leaving them He promised that the Spirit of truth should come to them and should (1) bring to their remembrance all that He had said unto them; (2) should guide them into all the truth; (3) should declare unto them the future; (4) should show unto them further matters concerning the Father and Himself (John 14: 26; 16: 13-15).

 

 

This would constitute their “treasure and out of this they were to impart Divine knowledge to others.  Thus they would become “disciples unto the kingdom of heaven and in their turn would thus make other disciples; and these they were to teach to observe all things whatsoever the Lord had commanded themselves (Matt. 28: 19, 20).

 

 

All this wealth of promise was fulfilled to that first band of disciples, including Paul.  Speaking of the “mystery” fully unfolded to him Paul said that it had been granted to him “to complete [Darby] the word of God, even the mystery formerly hidden (Col. 1: 25). Thus the mysteries of the kingdom were fully revealed.  As to the promise of the unveiling of the things to come, this found its fulfilment in the apocalyptic visions granted to John, for these carry forward the unfolding into the eternal kingdom of the new heavens and the new earth.  Paul had summarized the essential feature of the future in the sentence that “God shall be all in all” (1 Cor. 15: 28): John expanded the steps and stages of that consummation.

 

 

The unfolding of as much of the mind and purposes of God as He designs now to give having been thus completed, no subsequent revelation has been required or is possible.  The permanent record of it, through all its stages, was secured by the providence of God in preserving to later generations the written records of what prophets and apostles had taught.  Therefore this record, in the Old Testament, the Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, and the Revelation, has ever since been the available, and only available, treasure house out of which instructed scribes can draw what they can display and impart.  Every such scribe comes under the Lord’s description “householder house-despot, one who knows what treasures he controls, where to find them, and how to exhibit them to advantage.

 

 

The scribe to the kingdom must therefore emulate those scribes of the former age in this at least, that he meditates in God’s Word day and night, so as to be conversant with all its contents.  And he must also seek wisdom to open it out skilfully, harmoniously, attractively, impressively, and thus impart the truth to others to their enrichment, to the extension and establishment of the kingdom, and so to the glory of the King.

 

 

It is he who both does and teaches what the Lord commanded who shall be great in His kingdom (Matt. 5: 19). He must be himself a good man, have good treasure stored in his heart, and must bring it forth (Luke 6: 45). And so a senior scribe unto the kingdom exhorted a younger scribe in these pregnant words:

 

These things command and teach.  Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an ensample to them that believe, in word, in manner of life, in love, in faith, in purity.  Till I come, give heed to reading, to exhortation, to teaching.  Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.  Be diligent in these things, give thyself wholly to them; that thy progress may be manifest unto all.  Take heed to thyself, and to thy teaching.  Continue in these things; for in doing this thou shalt save both thyself and them that hear thee: (1 Tim. 4: 11-16).

 

 

3. Treasures New and Old.  The Lord and the apostles never neglected the truths that had long been revealed. They based their teachings and claims on the Old Testament.  “Think not that I came to destroy the law and the prophets: I came not to destroy but to fulfil” (Matt. 5: 17).  And Paul declared of his ministry that he was saying “nothing but what Moses and the prophets did say should come” (Acts 26: 22).

 

 

Yet they constantly threw new light on old scriptures, and also they brought out of the purposes of God new material which they built upon what had been before laid down.  This the instructed scribe will continue to do. The completed Word of God, the Bible, is inexhaustible.  The centuries through scribes unto the kingdom have brought into prominence truths found in the Book but formerly overlooked or overlaid with the rubble of human tradition.  Then, alas, godly men have formed systems of truth thus brought to light, which systems were but partial, and they have presently closed their eyes against everything not comprised in their imperfect creeds and formularies.

 

 

John Robinson, the Puritan, in century seventeen, could not sufficiently deplore that the Reformed Churches had come to a full stop in religion, for neither Lutherans nor Calvinists would go a step beyond what those great men had taught, though he was persuaded that “the Lord had yet more light and truth to break forth from His Holy Word*

 

* Similarly, in general, the followers of J. N. Darby will allow no variation from his prophetic scheme, nor will those of B. W. Newton readily go beyond his views.  So for nearly a century these schools of thought have remained stationary on that subject.

 

 

Blessed are the scribes who are brave and skilful to bring forth the new, and blessed are those hearers who have minds open to accept the new, so long always as it is brought forth out of our only store of things Divine, the Word, the Holy Scriptures.  Nor let it be overlooked that the Lord put the new before the old as that which the instructed scribe brings forth.

 

 

 

GENERAL REMARKS ON THE PARABLES OF MATTHEW 13

 

 

1. The moral sphere on earth which will arise from the impact upon men of the kingdom of God and heaven will develop these aspects:

 

 

(1) The message concerning God’s rights and purposes will be spread among men as seed is sown in a field. There will be a four-fold result.

 

 

(a) Some seed will be fruitless, because Satan will at once remove it from the mind of the hearer.

 

 

(b) Some seed will produce quick but only transitory effects.

 

 

(c) Some seed will at first promise due results, but these will be choked off by worldly concerns and cares.

 

 

(d) A portion of the seed sown will grow to maturity and fruitfulness.

 

 

(2) To counteract this fourth result the Evil One will craftily intermingle his “sons” among the godly, to the possible injury of the latter.

 

 

(3) There is a persistent, Divinely-implanted energy ceaselessly at work to secure fruit unto God.  Neither man nor Satan can ultimately frustrate this, for His word shall prosper in the thing unto which He has sent it (Isa. 55: 10, 11).  Therefore, while the servants of the King should be faithful and zealous, they should not be anxious, for their labour cannot be in vain, being wrought in the power of the Lord (1 Cor. 15: 58).

 

 

(4) The sons of the Evil One will contrive that the outward form of the kingdom shall not remain as was the Divine plan, a lowly institution, but shall be changed into a great corporation, a visible and comfortable sphere of operations for wicked spirits.

 

 

(5) By means of false teachings this outward society shall be stealthily and thoroughly corrupted from the simplicity and purity that is toward Christ.

 

 

(6) This corruption and confusion shall be so vast that men will scarce be aware that a Divine message and wealth are to be had.  Only by seeming accident will it come to their knowledge and possession.

 

 

(7) Yet in times and places there will be earnest seekers of truth and purity, and these shall find the pearl.

 

 

(8) This mixed and confused condition shall continue until it reaches it’s a foreseen consummation.  Then the Son of man will bring it to an end, by the agency of the angels of His power, and will establish on earth His kingdom in visible glory.

 

 

(9) For the maintenance and furtherance of His true interests, that is, for the deliverance of the Satan-enslaved and benighted, and for the strengthening of His own followers, the Lord will call and qualify instructed and faithful teachers of His truth on to the close of the age.

 

 

The passages cited above from Daniel (p. 119), point particularly to a godly remnant among Israel at the end of this age, God-fearing though not up till then disciples of Jesus.  This feature shows again that the kingdom of God is a wider sphere than the church of God.  The judgment scene shown in Matt. 25: 31-46, teaches the same lesson, for the sheep of that parable will be some who will inherit the kingdom though they had not themselves thought of the Son of man as the object of their service (vers. 37-40).

 

 

2. The scope of the parables is this whole age.  For the first parable views the personal activity of the Son of man when He was here, the Sower of the word, and the last extends to His personal intervention at His second advent.  The various aspects shown will be ever arising here and there all through the age.

 

 

There is no clear indication that these aspects would arise consecutively, each picturing a further and following period during the age.  This idea is negatived by the facts that as early as the second parable the end of the age is depicted, not only in the last parable, and that the features mentioned in all the parables did actually develop from the beginning of the age.  Birds of the air were active from the start, darnel appeared without delay, abnormal growth, false teachings, the treasure being hidden from some and sought by others, the net holding bad as well as good, the presence of instructed teachers - these conditions all arose at the beginning and have continued ever since in various areas and degrees.

 

 

3. The series of eight parables as given in Matthew 13 is divided circumstantially into two groups of four each.  The first four were addressed to the crowds in public, the second four to the disciples only and in private.  Mark 4: 34 states that it was “privately to His disciples that He expounded all things  This suggests that, though Matthew narrates the interpretation of the first two parables in the course of his report of the first four parables, it was actually given in private to the disciples.

 

 

It is somewhat conjectural to assign a reason for the one group being spoken to all and the other group to the few.  Yet it is fact that the crowds were mainly persons who had no faith but rather were blinded by unbelief, while the disciples were blessed with faith and understanding.  And yet it is to be borne in mind that the first four were but some of the parables addressed to all (Mark 4: 33), and we cannot say whether all those unrecorded parables were of the same character as those on record.

 

 

Yet there is indicated some closer connexion between the last three in Matthew than between the first four.  The latter are simply connected by the word “another each being merely additional; but the three are more closely linked by “again that is, they in some sense supplement one another.  It is a subtle feature more to be felt than defined.

 

 

It is wise not to be positive in assigning a reason for the division into public and private.

 

 

4. Some features of parabolic teaching may be noted:

 

 

(1) The same figure may have different applications.  Soil is found in five parables.  In parable one, the Sower, it means the heart of the individual.  In two, three, and four, darnel, spontaneous growth, and mustard tree, it points to the earth as the dwelling-place of men.  In parable five, the Treasure, no specific meaning is suggested or needed.

 

 

(2) Different figures may have the same meaning.  Sons of the kingdom and good fish are one, as are darnel and bad fish.  Gamer for wheat and vessels for fish have one meaning.  The corrupters are “darnel” when viewed individually, but corporately are a “woman  This variation carries two lessons:

(a) each figure contributes its own sense and completes the rest;

 

(b) that diverse figures are used, such as “garner” and “vessels bespeaks caution in defining the reality.

 

-------