I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Ezekiel 36: 25-27.
As one reads the four gospels in the Bible, it soon becomes clear that Jesus saw his role in life as introducing people to the Kingdom of God, or as it is alternatively referred to – The Kingdom of Heaven. In the ESV translation, “kingdom” is mentioned 126 times in the Gospels, and a further 34 times in the rest of the New Testament.
The people he was introducing it to were what we today refer to as Jewish, a very religious people whose concept of God and their relationship with him is defined by their holy book, The Old Testament, and in particular, the first five books of it – the Books of the Law. It is in that context that Jesus, being a Jew, saw God and related to Him, so it is important we keep that in mind if we in modern day western society want to understand what he was talking about.
In the light of that, before we starting looking into the more detailed aspects of the Kingdom of God that Jesus spoke of, it is a good idea to define some of the words and phrases he used, and thereby understand what he was actually meaning when he used them.
Let’s start with the phrase “Kingdom of God”. The meaning of the word ‘Kingdom’ hasn’t changed at all over the centuries, only the fact that there are few surviving kingdoms that were run as they were back then. A kingdom can best be described as a locality where those who live within it are subject to a set of rules, regulations, edicts etc. determined and administered by a monarchical form of government presided over by a king or queen.
Just as the Kingdom of Henry VIII was so named because Henry VIII was its king who set and administered its rule of government, the Kingdom of God is so named because Jesus saw God is its king; hence, he sets and administers the rules and regulations that apply to those over whom he has kingship. The Kingdom of God is the domain over which the spiritual sovereignty of God extends.
That then brings us to the question of who God is. I don’t intend to get sidetracked by lengthy discussion and debate as to who God is or if God even exists at all. Since we are looking into The Kingdom of God as Jesus deemed it to be, we need to look at God as Jesus perceived him to be if we are to understand what he said about God and his Kingdom.
The domain of God’s existence is referred to in the Bible as ‘Heaven’, so if God is spirit, as opposed to physical, his domain must also be spiritual, and not physical. It was only the influence of peoples from other religions who joined the Christian faith at a later time that the concept of Gods as beings with physical attributes, living in a physical place called heaven beyond the physical boundaries of Earth, that God and Heaven were given physical attributes. Many churches have run with the concept, and preach it as gospel, but there is nothing in the teachings of Jesus that supports the idea that God is anything but Spirit.
Throughout his Gospel, Matthew uses the phrase "kingdom of heaven" but in other gospels, the reference is to the Kingdom of God. One explanation as to why Matthew refers to it as the Kingdom of Heaven is out of sensitivity to the Jews, to whom his Gospel was written, to avoid mentioning the sacred name of God. The doctrine is the same, and there is no different view or meaning of the kingdom of God versus heaven; Matthew is simply using an indirect phrase that respects the reader.
As the Bible says God is Spirit, a look at what the word means and how Jesus used it in relation to the Kingdom of God is timely.
We as humans are born physically, but unlike all the other creatures on this earth, we are born with a soul, that is, with a mind, a will and emotions. We have intelligence, an awareness of ourselves and of our surroundings, we have a capacity to think, to reason, to reach conclusions and act upon them, rather than just respond by instinct. Call it what you will – the universe, whatever – the Bible refers to what drives this unique ability as ‘spirit’, which seems appropriate, since spirit means “essence”.
In this instance, the Bible applies the word to that which gives us life, in other words, the essence of life. Without that ability to think (the mind), reach conclusions and act upon them (the will), based on our response to our environment (emotions), we cease to function as complete human beings.
The second chapter in the Bible (Genesis 2) describes God as having breathed his spirit – the essence of life – into man (mankind), and mankind became a living soul (mind, will and emotions). Acts 17:28 describes the resulting God-mankind relationship as, “In Him we live and move and have our being”.
When that essence of life departs the body, we die. When that happens, the spirit is said to return to its source. The Bible refers to that source as God. Whether or not that ‘spirit’ retains the identity and attributes of the person it gave life to, is subject to debate. Some religions declare that a person’s spirit is re-cycled in a process referred to as reincarnation. Others, like the New Testament’s Paul, believe one’s spirit lives on as that person to start a new life, but in a physical heaven.
The Old and New Testaments each have a kingdom as the central theme of their content. Both their texts portray these kingdoms as vehicles through which God could introduce himself and the laws of life he established to the peoples of the world, in order that they might live happy, prosperous lives in harmony with each other.
Entry into both kingdoms was by birth; in the Old Testament’s kingdom, one had to be born of the line of the Old Testament patriarch, Abraham, a people referred to as the Children of Israel. There was no choice in being in that kingdom, every one born into one of the twelve tribes of Israel was automatically in it, and the covenant made between God and Abraham as recorded in the book of Genesis, applied to every one of them.
What the Bible refers to as the Ten Commandments was the code by which the Children of Israel had to conduct themselves, the terms and conditions of God’s covenant or agreement with them. These commandments were a list of what they couldn’t do, and were later added to by their religious and community leaders to create an even stricter code of behavior.
By contrast, the kingdom that ended up replacing it– the Kingdom of God (or Heaven) as introduced by Jesus, and documented in the four gospels in the New Testament - though established for the same purpose (God’s representatives on Earth), approached the task from a totally different, almost opposite angle.
One has to be born into both kingdoms to enjoy the benefits of being a part of them, but there the similarity ends. The kingdom of God is voluntary, entry is by choice so, unlike the Children of Israel, every one in it chooses to be there and so there is no need for a list of “though shalt not” rules. Not that the “though shalt not” rules don’t apply, it is just that those in the kingdom of God don’t need them as the spirit guiding those in the kingdom would never even consider not keeping them.
So, rather than being told what they can’t do in the Kingdom, Jesus, in Matthew 5, focuses on the positive outcomes of being in the Kingdom. He then follows the positives with a warning that it is so easy to lose the benefits of Kingdom living if the old self raises its ugly head and begins to override the guidance of the Spirit.
Further, he warns that it is also possible to have knowledge and understanding of the Kingdom and Kingdom living, to give mental ascent to it and even believe one is in it, but to not be, because the criteria for entry – being born of the Spirit – has not been observed.
Nicodemus (john 3) is the perfect example of someone with all the head knowledge of the Kingdom, but who wasn’t in the Kingdom. The rich young ruler had also done everything he expected would meet the criteria to be in the Kingdom, but Jesus pointed out to him that there was one thing he lacked. It wasn’t that he didn’t have enough faith, or that he lacked knowledge and experience of the things of God, but rather he was giving priority to the things pertaining to his natural life ahead of those of his Spiritual well being. His direction was still being set by his mind, his will and his emotions, rather than the Spirit having the final say, which is the very thing that separates those who are in the kingdom from those who are not.
Giving mental ascent to the Kingdom, which is what Nicodemus and the rich young ruler both did, is not enough, because the Kingdom of God is not about you being part of it, but about it being a part of you.
Mark 10: 13-15 says: “Then they brought little children to Him, that He might touch them; but the disciples rebuked those who brought them. But when Jesus saw it, He was greatly displeased and said to them, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God. Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.”
The Bible tells of a man named Nicodemus who was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin. He is mentioned in three places in the Gospel of John: He first visited Jesus one night to discuss Jesus' teachings. He told Jesus how the members of the Sanhedrin believed he must be a teacher come from God because no one could do the miracles he did unless God was with him. Jesus responded to that observation with the words, “except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
I find it interesting and quite telling that Jesus did not say, “you must be born again - full stop”, which is what many churches teach. Rather, he added, “except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” This infers there are two levels of living available to us, one – the physical – which is attained simply be being born physically, or “of water” which is how his audience of 1st century Jews would have understood it. The second level of living is a physical life but with an active rather than passive involvement of Spirit in it – a level that comes from being born again, but not a physical re-birth, rather, a spiritual re-birth.
The words of Jesus “you must be born again” at first appear to be a command, but those words are only half of what Jesus was saying. Add the second half - “unless a person is born again he/she cannot see (know/experience) the kingdom of God” and it changes the meaning. Now read it in context – they are being said to a deeply religious man who knows all about God’s kingdom but doesn’t have the relationship with God that he can see Jesus has - and it is clear Jesus wasn’t giving a command, but a direction as to how the man might achieve that.
To fully understand what Jesus was actually saying, let’s imagine Jesus was talking about the game of football, and Nicodemus was an ardent football fan. The conversation would have gone something like this:
Nicodemus: “Jesus, I know that you are more than an observer of the game of football, you seem to be part of the inner circle, you understand how the organisation operates, you know the players, the coach and administrators. You can’t achieve that unless you have close connections with the club.”
Jesus: “You must be a member. Unless you are a member you cannot be an insider, and have an intimate relationship with the game and your club.”
Nicodemus: “But I am a fan of the game and supporter of my club. I watch football on TV, I go along to all the games, I buy my tickets to see the game live. Isn’t that enough?”
Jesus: “That which is open to the public is open to you as a member of the public. Being a member of the public entitles you to watch the game, and enjoy it as a fan. That which is reserved for members is for members only. Don’t be surprised when I say to you, ‘you must be a member of the club’.”
Surely being religious is as far as one can go? says Nicodemus. Jesus answers him by saying a person can be a fanatical devotee to God and know everything there is to know about the things of God like you, Nicodemus, but still miss out on all the benefits the kingdom has to offer because he’s not a member.
By being a member you can be a full participant, an insider looking out as opposed to an outsider looking in. You don’t have to be a member to enjoy your football, but being a member takes you up to the next level in understanding, appreciating and getting the most out of the football experience. So it is with the things of the Spirit/God.
The conclusion we can draw from this discourse is that being born physically gives us access to all things pertaining to life as physical beings. It comes with an awareness of things pertaining to spirit, a built-in knowledge or conviction that there is more to life than what our five natural senses detect, but little more.
A spiritual re-birth opens the door to the realm or kingdom of Spirit, and by being under its direction, rather than just the mind, the will and the emotions with their limitations and shortcomings, we can reach our potential as humans and live life to its fullest.
Jesus often quoted Old Testament prophets when explaining his teaching, in part to provide evidence that what he was saying had already been said by the prophets, and to authenticate it as part of what the Jews already had been told and had accepted as being from God.
He does that here, and shows surprise that Nicodemus hasn’t recognized that Jesus is in fact paraphrasing Ezekiel 36: 25-27: “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. “
God was promising through the prophet Ezekiel, six centuries before Jesus, that a time would come when there would be the opportunity of a transformative new beginning, a spectacular cleansing, symbolised by water that washes away all impurities and idols, all made possible by God’s spirit being birthed in us. Jesus was saying to Nicodemus that that time had arrived.
All of us have faced moments when we wish we could “start over,” or at least expunge some of our worst faults. “Oh, for a man to arise in me / That the man I am may no longer be,” Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote. Or, as John Clare said, “If life had a second edition, how I would correct the proofs.” Being Born of the Spirit, or as Jesus describes it - Being Born Again - gives us that opportunity.
John the Baptist said, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand" (Matthew 3:2). The words “at hand” means “readily accessible as and when needed”. A variety of translations use the phrase, “has come near”. Either way, the Kingdom’s arrival is spoken of by John the Baptist and Jesus in the present tense, not future tense as some teach.
“Jesus repeated John’s message in Mark 1:14-15: “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
He also used it when teaching his disciples how to pray: "your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven” (Matthew 6:10). The arrival of the Kingdom is in fact the very first thing to be requested of God in the Lord’s Prayer.
Many Christians believe that the establishment of the Kingdom of God will take place at or around the time of The Rapture when a thousand-year reign of Jesus will begin. That is at odds with what Jesus said. In John 18:26, Jesus is quoted as saying, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”
When asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The Kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ for indeed, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20-21). At no time did Jesus say there was coming a time of reversal when people would be in the Kingdom of God, it was always going to be that the Kingdom was in them and in all future generations who followed their lead.
Jesus used a number of different examples in the parables he told to illustrate what life in the Kingdom is like, and what are the signs of someone being in the Kingdom. No doubt referencing Psalm 95:7 – “The Lord is our God, and we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” - Jesus referred to his relationship with those in the Kingdom as like that of a shepherd and his sheep, he being the Good shepherd, and we being his sheep. In John 10:27, Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Note that he did not say, “my sheep read my book” as he was addressing the Jews who were very familiar with the scriptures. It was not a lack of knowledge of the scriptures that excluded them from being his sheep - it was their refusal to believe; their unbelief meant they did not have a relationship with God.
Being in the Kingdom places one in a position where you can not only hear God’s voice, but distinguish his voice from other voices, and follow it.
In John 15, Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a person remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit.” Fruit is the evidence of what kind of tree a branch is growing from. If the tree is “Spirit”, the fruit coming from it with be the Fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace etc. (Galatians 5:22-23) - a biblical term that sums up nine attributes of a person living in the Kingdom. If those attributes of Spirit are not evident, then that person/branch is not “of the Sprit”, and therefore not a part of the Kingdom.
The seven parables about the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus told in Matthew 13 and the letters to the Seven Churches in the Book of Revelation, both confirm the message Jesus spoke during his three years of ministry on Earth, that the Kingdom of God was now “open for business” and available for anyone to enter, beginning with the proclamation of its arrival by John the Baptist, and from that time forward.
Few Christians are aware of the parallel between the Parables of Jesus in Matthew 13 and the letters to the Seven Churches in the Book of The Revelation. This is because, as verse 2 of Revelation 1 indicates, the book is written in “signature”, using symbols or “signs” to tell it story, and what the symbols mean and how they are to be interpreted is not taught these days.
The original word for “sign” was the Greek “sémeion” which became the Latin “signum” (from which we also get “signal,” “insignia” and “signature.”) Signum can mean anything from an “identifying mark” (a representation of something else that it symbolizes) to “proof” and even a “banner to follow.” In what are referred to as miracles in the other Gospels, the writer of the Gospel of John calls “signs”, the same word used in the Book of The Revelation. The word used in the original Aramaic text translates into English as “a representation of something else that it symbolises”.
The parables of Matthew 13 and the seven “signs” of the Revelation both map the journey of those in the Kingdom of God (Revelation refers to them as the Seven Churches) during the Christian era.
When read together, they not only provide a step by step guide to divine completeness for human beings, but prophetically document the detailed stages through which those in the Kingdom (illustrated by the seven churches), would pass, a summary of each stage (the seven trumpets), what they would encounter during each stage (the seven seals), and the consequences of not following his advice and direction through each stage (the seven bowls).
This step-by-step guide not only documents the individual spiritual walk of those in the Kingdom, but also, prophetically, as revealed in the Book of Revelation, the collective journey The Church would go through during what is historically referred to as The Church Age. With the benefit of hindsight, we in the 21st century should be able to look back over 2,000 years of church history and see how accurate those prophecies have been.
Applying the symbolism, the letters to the seven churches should identify the different strengths and imperfections of the different eras of the Christian age. Interestingly, the sevens not only apply to the Church as a body of believers but also to individual Christians in their walks with the Lord, so they should also give us a template against which we can measure our own progress, to see our weaknesses and strengths.
Utilising the many records that have been kept of Church history over the past 2,000 years, we can see how accurate the parables of Matthew 13 in conjunction with the letters to the 7 churches are in identifying the state of the first century church and subsequent eras in church history. With the benefit of hindsight, let us now see if the books of Matthew and Revelation got it right!
The pattern followed is that, with each of the seven letters, Jesus first offers praise and approval to the church before any criticism or condemnation, after which He gives his advise and warnings.
Message: The word of God as preached by the sower falls on a variety of grounds. It is universally accepted that Jesus is referring to himself as the sower, and that the seed he sowed was the word of God as encapsulated in the message of the gospel that he preached. He refers to it as the words of the Kingdom of God, the establishment of which was the theme of his ministry.
In the first verse of the Book of Revelation, Jesus told John that the things he was about to write down were shortly to come to pass.
As he received the revelation somewhere around 80AD, we can safely assume that the first church to be addressed - Ephesus - symbolises the church that existed in of 80AD; this would be the very first church, the church that came into being on the Day of Pentecost, the church of the first century. Subsequent messages to the other six churches should therefore refer to the spiritual condition of the Church at large and the followers of Christ in subsequent Christian eras, right up until today, and perhaps beyond.
Message: hot on the heals of Jesus having taught the true gospel, someone is going to come undercover and plant seeds of an alternate gospel. It will look and sound like the gospel Jesus taught, and will only be able to be identified as a counterfeit gospel when the crop has reached maturity and fruit (out-workings of the characteristics of the seed) begins to appear.
Mustard is a herb that, through cross breeding, can mutate into a tree. Instead of retaining its original form, that of a herb, it changes its appearance to that of a tree. What was once the greatest among herbs had now mutated into a tree that bore no mustard seeds (fruit).
By the beginning of the third century, the church was totally unrecognisable, bearing no resemblance to the little fellowship of The Way in first century Jerusalem. The church had gone from being a small herb that seasoned the world around it with the love of God and fellowship with the Holy Spirit, to a giant tree (the Roman Catholic Church?) where all and sundry brought their various pagan doctrines and philosophies and practiced them in the church, ie. many small bodies of people of equal standing directed by God. It was now a huge multi-branched religious organisation operated by man, destroying the seeds the tree is producing.
This is the shortest but most controversial of all the parables Jesus told. When Jesus said to his disciples that the Kingdom of Heaven was like leaven in bread, that would not have sounded right at all, because they knew what leaven represents in scripture: corruption. Leaven is symbolic of things that disintegrate, break up, and corrupt. How can the Kingdom be likened to leaven? In Luke 12:1, Jesus identifies the Pharisees as having adding leaven in their day. In Mark 8:15, He speaks of "the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod." Then, in Matthew 16:5-6, 11, Jesus says that the leaven He spoke about was the doctrine of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
It is almost unthinkable that the Kingdom of God could ever be contaminated by leaven. The Kingdom is supposed to be glorious and pure, how can this be? This parable not only tells us that it will be like that, it hints at how it will happen and what effect it will have on the Kingdom. Its alignment with the fourth church of the Book of Revelation gives the timeframe when the contamination would happen. Again, we have a picture of a woman, which in prophesy symbolises an organisation established to care for one another; based on the role of a mother as the carer of a family.
If we take the order the “sevens” are introduced as chronological, the period of church history covered by the fourth letter to the churches of Asia - the fourth trumpet, the fourth seal and the fourth bowl as well as the fourth parable – is the 4th century CE (Common era). In the 4th parable, the seed is being baked into a loaf. We know from the previous parables in this chapter that the seed is the word of God, therefore it is logical that the loaf being baked here is the end product of taking the various recorded words of God and putting them together into one, easily read and digested product.
As the Old Testament had already been compiled years before and does not contain the message of the Kingdom of God as taught by Jesus, this could only refer to the time when The New Testament was compiled. That took place in the 4th Century. So is Jesus saying The New Testament has been corrupted by some of its ingredients? Are some of its ingredients false doctrine? There is no other logical explanation.
In the Revelation, we have a "woman" (symbol of a carer of God's people) - the Roman Catholic Church or one of its officers - who was responsible for the selection and input of its ingredients. What are the characteristics of this mother figure in the parable? She hid the leaven. The verb "hid" (Greek, enkrupto) means "to cover, to conceal, to keep secret." Enkrupto is the same word from which we get our word "encrypt." A general tells his lieutenant, "Encrypt this message and take it to the colonel at the front line." The lieutenant mixes up the letters according to a code, and only the lieutenant or a person with the key to the encryption knows what the message is saying. In this parable, the one who put the leaven in the mix slipped it in during the very first stage of the bread-making process without anyone else knowing. It's a devious act by a devious person and no one else knows what he has done and that it will corrupt the finished product.
The big mystery before us is, what part of the ingredients is the leaven that corrupted the whole loaf (The New Testament) once it had been baked (compiled in its final, complete form)? The New Testament's ingredients consist of four gospels, the historic record of the early church that is the Book of Acts, the prophet Book of Revelation and 21 epistles, 14 of which are credited to Paul; one to James, two to the Apostle Peter, three to the Apostle John and one to Jude. Of these, the gospels tell only of Christ's teachings, and Acts simply records what happened within the early church, so we won't find any false doctrine there.
The Book of Revelation was dictated to its author, John, by Jesus, so the leaven must be in one or more of the epistles. Read the letters of the Apostles Peter and John, and you will find they simply reiterate the words and teachings of Jesus. The books of James and Jude also reiterate the words and teachings of Jesus, but in a manner suggesting they are rebuffing false doctrine introduced into the first century church. That only leaves the letters of Paul.
It is unthinkable to just about every Christian that Paul’s epistles might contain false doctrine. However, we must remember that it was Paul who the church at Ephesus put on trial and found guilty of being a teacher of doctrine different to that taught by Jesus. For this action, the church at Ephesus was commended by Jesus in his letter to them (Revelation 2)!
So who put this leaven into the New Testament? It wasn’t Paul – he was dead and buried long before the 4th Century. The first significant move toward the creation of a new Christian canon was initiated by Marcion, a ship owner and merchant, the son of a bishop of the church at Sinope in Asia Minor. Marcion proposed that the church reject the Jewish scriptures and embrace a new canon of its own. The development of the Biblical Canon took centuries and appears to have been finally settled in the 4th century, specifically at the Council of Carthage in 397 and 419. By then, Marcion had died, but his recommendations were followed closely even though he had been excommunicated from the church for teaching heresy.
According to Marcion, the god of the Old Testament, whom he called the Demiurge, the creator of the material universe, was a jealous tribal deity of the Jews, whose law represented legalistic reciprocal justice and who punishes mankind for its sins through suffering and death. Contrastingly, the God that Jesus professed is an altogether different being, a universal god of compassion and love who looks upon humanity with benevolence and mercy. Marcion used Paul's epistles to support his beliefs and inserted them into his early Biblical canon. Though numerous bishops and theologians expressed concern at the inclusion of Paul's epistles “because they were not inspired by God”, as they did contain some things that corresponded with doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, they left Paul’s epistles in the Canon.
This parable seems, on first reading to be about God redeeming mankind but there are too many anomalies in this short verse for that to be the explanation. The person who finds the treasure is not a king but a man, indicating that it is not God who finds the treasure; besides if it were God, he would have already known about the treasure, and its location. So we have a man who finds a treasure in a field. He buries it and buys the field in order to obtain the treasure. So who was this man?
As there are no clues in the parable itself, we might never know the answer to that question were it not for the Book of Revelation, and the cycle of sevens of the Book of Revelation. The description of the fourth era is an accurate description of what we refer to as the Dark Age, which would place the fifth era in the Renaissance. Generally described as taking place from the 14th century to the 17th century, the Renaissance was a fervent period of European cultural, artistic, political and economic “rebirth” following the Middle Ages. Was the rediscovery of classical philosophy, literature and art the treasure that was found buried in the field referred to in the Revelation?
In terms of the Kingdom of God, when considering who, during that timeframe, gave up all he had for it, one name springs to mind - Martin Luther. When studying the Bible, Martin Luther was startled by many of the truths he discovered there that the church had moved away from. His attempts to bring the church back into line from 1518 onwards led to his excommunication and the formation of the Reformed church based on the Bible. Note that the treasure in the field was buried (not visible except to those who went digging) and that the field was empty (unfruitful, no crops growing). So is it a reference to Martin Luther, who discovers the truths buried in the Bible about God's love toward mankind? Luther gave up his position in the Catholic Church to make known his revelation to the people of the Church, but not before keeping silent about his find until he has fully understood the doctrines taught by Jesus and the Apostles of the 1st century church. Who else fits the description?
At first, the sixth parable appears to be little more than re-hash of the fifth parable, in which a man finds a treasure hidden in a field, and goes out and buys the field in order to obtain the treasure for his own. But here, the circumstances are quite different. The find is not accidental but deliberate. This man is a merchant who knows what he is looking for and when he finds it, obtains it by selling all that he owns in order to raise the buying price. So who might this merchant be? Jesus gives no clues in his very short dialogue, nor do the disciples to whom he was speaking ask for an explanation.
Like the Parable of the Buried Treasure, if it wasn't for the fact that the other parables in the series of seven fit so well into the pattern of the “sevens” of the Book of Revelation, we probably would never find out.
What we call the missionary era began immediately after the end of the 1,260-year long reign of the Beast (the controlling power over God’s Church during the 4th era). That controlling power could only be the papal reign of the Roman Catholic Church over its ten provincial regions, which lasted from 538 AD when control of the Roman Empire was transferred to the Pope, to 1798, when Napoleon Bonaparte had the pope imprisoned, thereby ending the era of Papal control over Europe.
That this parable parallels the 6th era in the Revelation, which in turn corresponds to the great missionary era of the 19th century adds weight to the theory that the merchant is in fact a Christian or Christians in general who, in that era, developed a real passion to win the lost souls of the world for Jesus. Many missionaries paid the ultimate price - death or a lifetime of service in a foreign land in order to obtain the spiritual treasures waiting to be harvested in the mission fields of the world. For missionaries and others the price they paid was high - walking away from family, friends, employment, security, a home, to give up years of their life in the service to others.
A net is cast over a wide area and produces a large catch. The catch is later sorted, the best fish are kept and the rest are thrown away.
During the late 20th century, the missionary era came to a close and electronic media (television, radio, internet) became a powerful vehicle of evangelism, allowing a far wider reach with the message of the gospel that includes all nations. Could this be 'the net being cast over a wider area for a greater catch?' Not everyone that comes into the Kingdom at this time will be saved however, and a sorting out must take place so that those worthy of being saved will be saved, and those who are not will be rejected.
The 6th Era in the Revelation is followed by a stock take, in which those worthy of being a part of the Kingdom are welcomed into the Holy Place, and those who are not are still welcome to worship at the temple, but their access is restricted to the outer courts. In his 7th parable, Jesus illustrates this sorting out as being what I refer to as a “John West” moment, when he selects the best and rejects the rest.
Elsewhere, he likens it to the separation of sheep from goats. In the time of Jesus, when this occurred it did not mean the goats were immediately sent to slaughter, rather that they would not get the special treatment, feeding, care and attention set aside for the sheep of the flock. This reminds me of the conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus, how that Nicodemus wasn’t told he was going to hell for being religious, but that there was a higher level to the spiritual experience that just being knowledgeable about the things of God, and that could be entered into by being born again.
That the 7th parable of Matthew 13 is about the Kingdom of God and not the people outside of it indicates that all the fish that have been caught are in the net. If the casting of the net is the preaching of the Word of God to the nations, it stands to reason that those in the net who get rejected did responded positively to the preaching of the Word of God. The weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth comes from those who believe that, by being in the net, they have been selected, but as the Kingdom of God is not in them, they get rejected.
These are the ones Jesus spoke of in Matthew 7:23 who continued to work their iniquity (live outside the authority of the Kingdom). They include followers who prophesied, drove out demons and performed miracles in Jesus’s name, but Jesus says he never had a relationship with them. They sang the songs, they knew the word and even preached it, but were living outside the Kingdom of God.
The shock and horror at being shut out, and annoyance at themselves for not heeding the warnings such as the one to Laodicean church, is reflected in their response.
The use of parables - an earthly story to explain a spiritual truth or principle – was not new to the Jews of his time. The prophets of the Old Testament used a similar literary device all the time, substituting one word or phrase for another so that those to whom the words were being addressed would hear and understand the message, but those to whom the message was not intended would hear something quite different. In Matthew 13, Jesus quotes Isaiah 6: 1-13 to explain why he taught this way.
I suspect that, when the disciples asked Jesus why he spoke to the people in parables, the question and explanation was for the benefit of non-Jewish readers like us who would not have been familiar with the use of parables. His Jewish listeners, who knew prophets used this literary device, substituting symbols for words (eg. the word ‘beast’ substituted for a governmental authority), would have expected Jesus to do the same, and they would not have surprised when he did.
What they would have also noticed is that he did not illustrate what the Kingdom of Heaven was like with one big, long parable, but seven short ones. The fact that there were seven would have been significant to his disciples. Unlike most languages, Aramaic, which they spoke, does not use numerals for numbers, but rather words, which have an alternate meaning to their numeric value. That makes them perfect for use in parables or prophecies where a number is written but the alternate word carries an added meaning.
The numbers 3, 7, 12 and 40 in particular come up time and time again in the scriptures, and are included to add an extra truth that is not contained within the written words. Number seven represents the completed work of God, from the beginning to the end of a cycle. In the Book of Genesis we read that the process of creation of the world took seven days. To non-Jews, that seems like an unbelievably short time to create the world and everything in it, but to a Jew it didn’t say that at all – it said that creation was a perfect, completed work of God.
Few people know or realise that the pattern of a seven-day week made up of six days of work, with rest on the seventh, before starting the cycle over again, was first set by God for his “working week”. The way the whole world still measures time in seven-day blocks or weeks was set by God himself as documented in the book of Genesis.
If we apply the meaning of the number seven to the parables of Jesus in Matthew 13, not only do we have an explanation of what the Kingdom of God is, but a sign (signified by there being seven of them) that these parables document all the stages of the spiritual journey taken by those in the Kingdom, from the beginning, through to the God’s completion of His work in their lives. This applies both to his followers collectively (the church), as well as individually.
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