CHAP. 12. (continued)
The Lord Jesus was the very shortest part of three days in the grave. We should remember that the Jewish way of reckoning was to count a part of a day or year, as a whole one. Throughout the O.T., a part of a year is reckoned as a whole one, but there is a difference between the way the ten tribes reckoned the reigns of their kings, and the way Judah reckoned.
I do not think we should be warranted in counting the repentance of the Ninevites a repentance unto life; nor that of every individual heart before God. This brings out the awful sin of the rejection of such an One, greater than the Temple, greater than Jonah, greater than Solomon. In reference to the last named the principle comes out that to him that hath shall more be given. Solomon gave back to the queen of Sheba all she brought, and a lot more besides. If we use what He gives us, He can give us more; but He never gives us anything to make much of ourselves. One great point the Lord makes here of the queen is her wonderful earnestness. But I have no doubt there is so much to distract our hearts, that he who values Christ must be earnest.
Verse 43. The man here out of whom the demons are gone, is an illustration of that Christ-rejecting generation. Empty, swept, and garnished—ready for an occupant, the Jews will be like it when the church is gone, and they will never have been in such a condition before, ready for the antichrist. Such will be the state of the mass of the Jews. We have already had a picture of what will take place, when the demons entered into the swine, the type of the apostate part of the nation.
In verses 46-50 the Lord is showing the setting aside of His Jewish relation; then in the following chapter you get a typical action, the Lord goes out of the house and sits by the sea side, and then you get parables showing grace going out to the whole world. The stream of grace still flows on. And does not God's word show as God's cognizance of Mary and Peter! We get more of Peter's mistakes than of any other; and of His mother we get the Lord's words, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?” and “Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.” But on the cross—the hour had come—you get the Lord's perfect human affection, and a divine person superior to all circumstances, ordering all things Himself. It is in John you get this, not in Luke. There is an earthly family and a heavenly family. Here it is the heavenly family superseding the earthly one. “Whosoever shall do the will of my Father that is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother.” That is the family—all disciples. “Whosoever.” It is God's commandment that we should “believe on him,” which at that time His brethren did not. “This is the true God, and eternal life.”
We could almost say the end of this chapter corresponds to the end of the sixty-ninth week of Daniel, and that there is the great parenthesis in chapter 13.
CHAP. 13.
The prophet had said, “Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness,” here the King is rejected. Yet if they rejected Him grace still goes on, and flows out to the Gentiles. The Lord had closed Jewish relationships, and spoken at the end of chap. 12 of a new family, a new relationship formed by the word of God. So He leaves the house, goes to the sea, and instead of a king reigning, it is “Behold, a sower went forth to sow.” This action is typical. Outside God's ordered government, the sea often speaks of lawlessness. So in keeping with this you get in ver. 2 “great multitudes.” Every word is in its place.
This chapter gives us seven parables. That other parables were spoken at the same time we gather from Mark and Luke, who use them in quite different connections. Here we have the great gap between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks of Daniel. The first parable is introductory. It is not a similitude of the kingdom of heaven, because the King is mot there seen in heaven. It is His own work on earth. As has been said, You here get what was public and what was private. The parable was spoken in public; the exposition in private. But it may perhaps be as well for us to take both together.
The seed is the word of God, and is the same in each of the cases before us. There was nothing defective in the seed. The results have to do with the soil or ground. Luke speaks of an honest and good heart; that is never found in man naturally, but only as produced by the grace of God.
There are four classes of hearers. In the first class the devil prevails; in the second the flesh; whilst in the third it is the world. In the fourth class, however, the Holy Ghost it is that prevails. Satan comes when the seed is sown by the wayside; it does not enter, it does not take root, for the wicked one catches it away. Hence there is no result. The defect is in the soil. It had not been plowed up. It was the hard and beaten path.
Then there were corners in the field, not the path, but where they could not plow because of the rock. When the sun was up the seed was scorched. When tribulation or persecution arises the flesh gives up; it does not consider it worth while “enduring.” It is the flesh that prevails here. In John 6 we get what corresponds to this. They said, “This is a hard saying,” and they went back. When Peter is asked if he will go, he says “Lord, to whom shall we go?” He was shut up to Christ,
“Some fell among thorns.” There you get the world. The Lord says, “The cares of this age” —that is the first thing mentioned— “and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things,” or “pleasures of life.” There are the three things mentioned in Mark and Luke. Lot and Abram both get rich by going down to Egypt, by unfaithfulness; they both came up with abundance; but it would have been better for Lot if he had lost all than to have been separated from Abram; he never had an altar after.
The good ground is divided into three classes, but all are fruitful. You know the story of John Newton! He had been writing about A B C Christians, and a young clergyman wrote to him, and said he had been testing himself by it and had found he was in the “C” class, the highest. John Newton wrote back and said there was one thing he had forgotten to mention, namely, that those in the “C” class did not know it. So, no doubt, those who bear an hundred-fold do not know it. It is quite different from what people generally think. If they fail they say, We are all unprofitable servants; but it is when you have done all you are to say it! So in Matt. 25, those who pleased Him were quite unconscious of what they had done. And the principle is the same for us.
The Lord makes all intensely individual when He says, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear (ver. 9). All this should put us on our guard. There is such a thing as being fruitful “in every good work and word.”
Verse 10. “The disciples came.” We are let into secrets of His. It was the rejection of the King that brought out the mysteries of the kingdom. It is not according to what we get in the O.T. with its glorious accounts of the kingdom. They await fulfillment. We are, as John says, “in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.” He is still the waiting One, waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. The Lord has pit us in the place of friends if we think of ourselves in connection with ver. 11. Others were not so favored. Kings and prophets and righteous men had desired to see what the disciples saw, and had not seen it. So the disciples were marvelously blessed, but yet not so blessed as we are. The Lord told them “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now,” which shows conclusively that after the Holy Ghost should be given the saints would be in a far better position than even these disciples.
In the end of Luke 10 you get Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, and hearing His words. The Lord was Martha's guest, but Mary was the Lord's guest, and He approved that it should be so. In Luke 11 you get the Lord teaching His own to pray. Martha's service was all right in John 12 There was no grumbling as to Mary there. The grumbling was on the part of Judas. In both cases Mary has not a word to say, but the Lord has a word for Mary. I suppose we have principles for believers in ver. 12. As the Lord gives us any truth, and by His grace we make a right use of it, He will trust us with more. You get the thought of making the right use of it in Prov. 11, “There is that scattereth and yet increaseth.” If a person just thought of himself and ate his morsel alone that would not be making a right use of it. We must receive before we can give out. If God has given you something which has been a blessing to your own soul, and you impart it to a brother or sister, you make it more intimately your own.
That is very solemn in the end of verse 12, “Whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.” In another place it is “seemeth to have.” It is possible to have that which will be taken from you. Where the Lord speaks of the talents, the one that had one talent is a servant of the Lord Jesus, yet it is taken from him and given to him that had ten. The talent that he had was light possessed; men are responsible for the light they have.
Verse 13. The Lord takes the place of the rejected One, and because of His rejection there is judicial blindness. That is why He refers to Isa. 6 And if you take this in Matt. 13 and the reference in John 12 and again in Acts 28, you will see they refer to Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and it is Trinity in Unity. “Holy, holy, holy,” that is Trinity. “Whom shall I send?” there is Unity. “Who will go for us?” there is Trinity. Here in Matthew it is spoken of God; in John, of the Son; in Acts, of the Holy Ghost.
Then verse 14 shows that Christ was rejected in face of the most positive evidence; they shut their eyes: hence judicial blindness, and now the parables. In a parable, where the key is not given, there is obscurity; but when the key is given, it is a most blessed way of conveying the truth.
As the verses that follow have been already anticipated, we will go on to verse 24. The great thing is to distinguish between the church and the kingdom. When these are confounded you fall into terrible confusion. I turned up a lot of writers out of curiosity, and could not find one, outside those known as “Brethren” who were clear about this. They confound the church and the kingdom. Take, for instance, the Church of England, which uses this parable of the tares to justify their not putting away from them the wicked, they are to remain! —overlooking the Lord's own interpretation that “the field” (wherein both wheat and tares are to be tolerated), “is the world” (vers. 38) —not the church!
The kingdom takes in Christendom. You could not say a Mohammedan or a Buddhist was in the kingdom; but Roman Catholics, Nestorians, and Greek Church, etc., are all in the kingdom. It would be terrible to suppose (and utterly opposed to the teaching of the Epistles) we are “to let both grow together” in the church! “Do not ye judge them that are within?” “Put away from among yourselves the wicked person” (1 Cor. 5.). In 2 Timothy it is a great house and utter confusion, and things so bad, that not being able to “put away” the wicked person as was done in Corinth, we are responsible to purge ourselves out. You cannot put yourself out of “the house,” but you can purge yourselves from vessels to dishonor. There will always be some who call on the Lord out of a pure heart, till He come.
The first parable which we have looked at is general, and takes in the Lord's ministry here. This second parable is a similitude of the kingdom of heaven. Here we get rather the effect of the good seed of the first parable. The good seed there was the word of the kingdom; the good seed here are those who have been affected by that word. It shows that where God is working, Satan is working too. It was so in the garden, and throughout scripture Satan is seen at hand working also. So here. Saints failed; it was a time of unfaithfulness. “Men slept.” The enemy sowed the tares among the wheat, and went his way. Satan had done the mischief, and knew it would spring up; he knew the result. The Apostle could say in one of his earliest epistles, “The mystery of iniquity doth already work.” The enemy was at work there.
“But when the blade was sprung up, etc.” when it was making progress, then what the devil had done was made manifest. This is explained by the Lord Himself when the disciples were within. The darnel began to be seen in the Acts of the Apostles. I don't suppose we could rightly say that Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 were the devil's children. Theirs was “a sin unto death” (1 John 5:16). But in chap. 8 Simon Magus gets in. There was no work of grace here; he had neither part not lot in the matter, though he had been baptized.
No one could dogmatise, but God uses angels providentially, and the tares have to be bound in bundles to burn, and it is surprising the number of unorthodox sects that have sprung up of late years. I mean those that are fundamentally wrong. It is difficult to imagine a true Christian being ensnared by them. How many “bundles"! They all deny the divinity of the Lord, and eternal punishment—these evil sects that have come over from U.S.A. Those two evils often go together.
Now we come to the explanation of this. They grow together till the time of harvest. The servants propose to root them up. The Master says, “Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye gather up the root with them.” These bundles will not be burnt till the church is gone. The bundles will be left—all the darnel; but others will be left here too, that will be gathered into the garner, not the heavenly garner, but the earthly one. We see this typified in Lev. 23:22, where the corners of the field are left after the feast of weeks and before the feast of trumpets. God will have some here beside the darnel, after the church is taken up—the poor Jew and the stranger Gentile. These are they of whom the Baptist speaks (Matt. 3:12), “Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor and gather his wheat into the garner.” It is the earthly garner of the millennial blessedness. It is chaff there, not tares, that is burnt with unquenchable fire; the Lord will do that.
Verse 31. The mustard is called the least of all the seeds—I suppose, of what are cultivated. The growth here is abnormal. Mustard seed in nature never becomes a great tree. When they see this natural development as if divine and perfect, any simple soul can see the growth to be abnormal. We shall have that explained more fully by and by.
Verse 33. Leaven means evil, and it was excluded from the sacrifices. It had a place in the meat offering of Lev. 23 because it is recognized that there is an evil nature in those who form the church, and there was a sin offering to meet it. There was no leaven and no sin offering with the sheaf of first fruits. The leaven was not burnt on the altar. When we come to the N. T. and the Lord's own teaching, He tells us to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, of the Sadducees, and of the Herodians. That of the Pharisees was self-righteousness; of the Sadducees, infidelity; and of the Herodians, worldliness. Now people take the leaven here to mean the gospel, that will, as they say, leaven the whole world. Now meal is always used in a good sense in scripture, but this is not the case with leaven. So it is turning it upside down to make the meal profited by the leaven. In 1 Cor. 5. the leaven is moral; but the leaven of Galatians is doctrinal evil, and I rather think that is the thought here—false doctrines mixed up with the food of the household.
Verse 36 is very significant. Jesus goes into the house. These disciples want to know and to understand the parable of the tares. We get blessed encouragement, however small we are, to look to the Lord. “Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” I do not know if the Lord had it before Him as we read in Isa. 28:7, “They also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way.” Wine and strong drink cause excitement; as a result they err and they stumble. But we may go on to verses 9 and 10, of Isa. 28.
It is plain enough from verse 38 what the field is: it is not the church. It is the work of the Son of man to sow, so it is what has been produced by the seed of the first parable. The tares are the children of the wicked one. Verse 41 is very different to the thought of the Lord's coming for His church. For then He comes Himself with a shout, but here His angels will gather His elect from the four corners; when He comes for the church we shall be taken away and all the tares left behind. The Christian is told to pray for his enemies. James and John did not understand what manner of spirit they were of when they wanted the Lord to call down fire on the Samaritans. It was perfectly right for Elijah to do so, but the Lord had not come now to judge the world. Israel's blessing is always connected with the judgment of their enemies; not so ours. We shall leave them all behind.
In every place in the N.T. where it speaks of one being taken and another left, it is, one taken for judgment, and one left for blessing. It will be true of course, that if two people are together when the Lord comes for His own, one saved and one unsaved, He will take the saved and leave the other; but everywhere in scripture where the phrase is used, it is one taken by judgment, and the other left for millennial blessing. When we come further on and find the Son of man dealing with the nations, it is sessional; and I do not think those judged there will appear before the Great White Throne; the Judge has already pronounced their final doom. So it may be here. Only it is the angels that do the work here, there it is the Son of man Himself.
We must never for a moment think that the judgment has to do with deciding whether a soul is saved or lost. That is settled in this life. At the Great White Throne there will be a right apportionment of judgment in perfect righteousness, and every one will have his mouth shut.
“There shall be 'wailing'"; rather “the weeping and the gnashing of teeth” (verses 42, 50). The two words “weeping” and “gnashing” of teeth bring out different characters; I do not think both will be necessarily true of each individual.
Verse 43. The “Father's house” (John 14) is pure grace, yet there will be those who shall sit on His right hand, or on His left: He will give it suitably. He says it is not mine to give except to those for whom it is prepared. We must remember the church will have been removed and all the tares left behind, so the angels do two things here, bind the tares in bundles, and then take them out of the kingdom. There must be moral fitness to be subjects of His kingdom. John the Baptist was sent to preach the baptism of repentance in order to prepare them.
The angels are elect and holy. This shows that some of the angels that were created were preserved from falling; that was their election. Whereas the human race fell in its federal head, so that all are fallen. The church is an object of great interest to the angels. By it they learn the manifold wisdom of God. That is Why brothers take their hats off, and sisters keep their bonnets on, in the assembly. 1 Cor. 11.
The Lord Jesus was in the world, and the world knew Him not (John 1:10). And it says, “the world knoweth us not,” but when He is manifested we shall be also (1 John 3:1, 2). Our life is hid with Christ in God; the thought here is not our security, but that the world knows not our life. In “spite of all the confusion the Lord knoweth them that are His, and He never mistakes. The obverse side of the seal is, “Let everyone that nameth the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.” All the saints will “shine forth” then. These will take in others besides the church. All that have part in the First Resurrection will have their place in the heavenly department of the coming kingdom.
In the pearl (ver. 46) we see the unity and beauty of the church. “Treasure” (ver. 44) may be composed of all sorts of things, and of coins of all kinds. The treasure was in obscurity, “hid in the field"; by and by it will be in manifestation. “For joy thereof he goeth and selleth all that he hath” —gives up everything. The field is the world. Think of a sinner buying the world! Yet that is how the verse is usually viewed No, for our sakes He became poor. It is important to see that the world is bought. The Christian is both bought and redeemed. This may help to explain “denying the Lord that bought them” (2 Peter 2:1). If I am bought, I change my master, but when redeemed I change my status. It is love that makes one “a bondman” afterwards. The pearl was very attractive to Christ. It is wonderful to think He surrendered everything to get it! How the figures used of the holy city tell of magnificence! “Every several gate was of one pearl.” There is unique beauty in the pearl. It is “the church glorious” which He is going to present to Himself, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, separate from everything offensive to God and Himself. “The merchantman seeking goodly pearls” supposes one able to discern their value and to appreciate them. This shows His appreciation the price He paid to get it.
Verse 47. This next parable does not suppose a work of grace in every soul gathered into the net; yet the net only gathers a small portion of the fish in the sea. How foolish then to think of the whole world being converted in face of so plain a scripture to the contrary. The vessels then would represent companies of saints, nothing to indicate different sects. Those who think that the church must take in every respectable parishioner because tares and wheat must grow together till the harvest, cannot understand this at all.
The devil's work grows apace and becomes great. If you see ecclesiastical greatness it is Satan's work. Anything that is great now in days of apostasy cannot be of God. Thus you see a little grain of mustard seed becoming a great tree, abnormally. Then the leaven spreading everywhere. But in this treasure there is nothing great to human eyes; and I suppose the greatest pearl that ever was could be held in the tiniest infant's hand.
The net gathers of every kind. But they are the same ones that cast the net that discriminate and cast the bad away; it is not the work of angels which is judgment. It was perfectly right for Simon Magus to be told the truth by Peter. God hates mixture, all His word shows us that. Ox and ass plowing together; and all the mixtures tolerated by man, are abomination to Him, and so are mixed principles too. It is the end of “the age” of course in ver. 49.
Verse 51. The Lord corrected the disciples in John 16. So with all their boast they could not stand much. If the Lord's love to them was not greater than theirs to Him it would not stand. Of that we may be confident.
Verse 52. The scribes were the learned people; the word nearly always conveys that thought. His treasure is the word of God. Things of this life are not our own (see 1 Tim. 6:17-19). We get many scriptures that apply in that direction what the Lord said to His disciples. Peter said, “Behold, we have left our own, and followed Thee. And he said unto them, Verily, I say unto you, there is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting” (Luke 18:28-30). If we went to the O. T., what can be plainer or more simple than “He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord.” Will He be a debtor? Where could you get better interest, or lay it out to greater advantage? But “He that soweth sparingly, shall reap also sparingly,” and Prov. 11 is very helpful in that direction.
“Things new and old.” The kingdom is old, but the mysteries of the kingdom are new. The truths about the kingdom are found in all the O. T.
Verse 54 corresponds with what occurred in the synagogue of Nazareth the first time after He was anointed. They wondered at His words of grace, and said, “Is not this the carpenter's son?”
No: only legally. Melchizedec typified the Lord, being ungenealogised, and having a priesthood that was not successional, but living in the power of an endless life, a priest for ever. The Roman Catholics oppose it in every way, and no doubt numbers of Christians do too, that anyone else was born of Mary, and they say that the Jewish way of reckoning was to count cousins as brethren; but Acts 1:14 is as clear as anything, and that is the last time we get Mary spoken of. She thence disappears. What a marvelous thing this if she was to have the place the Roman Catholics give her! They say that James the son of Alphæus, and Jude the brother of James, were His brethren. But His brethren were there as well as these two, James and Jude. And it is His brethren who wrote the Epistles that bear their names, but they did not call themselves so.