Note the parable of the Sower comes before the sentence declared to be resting on the people, and the Remnant are then distinguished, and the kingdom of heaven is not mentioned until the judgment on the people is declared, but it is called, in the explanation to the disciples, ‘The word of the kingdom.'
It is important to understand that the field is the world, not merely as an ecclesiastical point, but as going out into the whole world beyond Jewish precincts. When Christ sows it is not merely Jewish—there He sought fruit.
Not 'The end of the world,' but "The end of the age," or rather "completion of."
40. "The completion of this age."
44. It is the character of the kingdom, though, no doubt, it is Christ that did it. Judaism was not this.
This is a blessed chapter, not simply as unfolding dispensational dealing, but, as showing us in the words of Jesus flowing from His mind on His rejection, the whole scene of God's ways to the end. He, presented to Israel, is rejected. All God's ways at once come out of the treasuries of wisdom in Him. How perfect this is! He was not insensible (see chapter 11) but perfect. The effect of what acted on Him was to bring out, in touching the springs within, all the divine treasures whether of grace or wisdom. As long remarked, He sits on the sea, has left the house and Israel, and brings what is to produce fruit, does not seek it on any plant on earth. Israel is judged, the Remnant owned; they had, too, the things prophets and righteous men had desired to see. Then the first is individual, then the whole external history of the kingdom of heaven, what it had become like, and then the internal, known to divine intelligence—the action of Satan in the field—this does not appear in the net. The former was the positive activity of the enemy, where he had scope for his activity. Gathering fishes is another matter—fisherman's work—the bad a result, not meeting the purpose. We must not confound all these tares positively sown by the devil such as Popery, heresies of every kind, Gnosticism, etc. In the last parables, I cannot for a moment doubt we have the mind of Christ, only in the first two what He was really doing now He was rejected; in the third, the action of His servants in the Gospel. First, the world for what was hid in it—Judaism was not hid but contrasted—and then the Church in its proper beauty. In the fishes, the work of the fishers of men; only a net, not a hook. The tares, previously gathered into bundles, are cast into the fire. In the second case, we have nothing of the good beyond the vessels. In the wheat we have, because it is in the world—they are in glory. The fish had been taken for their own object by the fishermen, and this goes beyond the kingdom in its outward form, even when glorious. This is striking, as showing that the point here is hidden purpose, to be spiritually apprehended, as other Scriptures teach us.
We have here the whole course of events of the latter days. First, providential gathering of the wicked in the world, the saints gathered into His garner, i.e., Christ coming to receive the saints. Then the wicked cast into the fiery furnace, the coming to judge the quick, and then the righteous shining like Himself in His Father's kingdom—the heavenly part of the manifestation.