Address—Josh Stewart
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OK.
Well, it's time to begin the meeting.
Could we, uh, could we begin by singing the 1St 2 verses of him one 34134?
Which is.
Uh.
Dividend, Sir. There you go and crying.
About it. And we're going to come around and we'll hear you.
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1354 fingers are not here in 5000.
Calm there we go out on the end of the day.
I got a boy. Oh yeah.
Let's pray before we begin.
Our loving God and our Father, we come before thee this evening and we just confess our need of help to be able to present the message that we feel is on our heart to.
In a way that would be understandable and that there would be something from this talk that would be practical as well, that would be a help to us in our everyday lives. And we just give thanks to be able to have the privilege of honoring, of adoring that king who was once rejected. What a privilege. We just give thanks, our Father, in the name of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Well, if we have time at the end of the meeting, we can.
Maybe sing the last two verses of that hymn.
And the subject I would like to speak about tonight is not the easiest subject, but I think it's very informative. I think that it's something that will be a really a big help to many of us here in this room to get a better understanding of the ways of God, of God's purposes, of his plans.
And of the time that we're living in right now. And I also think it will be very practical.
And so the subject I would like to speak on tonight is the Kingdom of Heaven.
So what is the Kingdom of heaven and in order to.
In order to help us be established and what the Kingdom of Heaven is, I have a chart which I will unveil in in just a moment. But before we talk about the Kingdom of Heaven, I think it would be helpful for us to understand that a Kingdom is a kind of a government. Can anyone tell, tell us when was the first government that was established in this world?
Someone just raise your hand, doesn't matter who.
From the Bible, what was the first government established in this world?
Go ahead.
It was it wasn't solved. This is going a little bit a little bit before solved. That was that was a good try. Anyone else?
Umm, it was before Egypt.
Noah That's right. Thank you very much. So when Noah and his family came off the ark, God said to them, whoso sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed. In other words, if person A kills person B, you're to put person A to death. That's serious. That's called capital punishment. And basically that's the principle of government, that evil has to be punished.
And so God had had to judge the earth with a flood, because it says that violence and corruption had filled the earth. People were killing one another and beating one another and ripping each other off.
And it got to such a point that God said, I'm going to wipe the earth clean. And so when no and his family came off the ark, God told him to repopulate the earth. But he wouldn't let them go into the new earth without something new, which was government. And so government was given to restrain evil. And we have governments today, right? If you if you speed and a policeman sees you, he'll pull you over and give you a speeding ticket. And so government is there to restrain evil.
00:05:30
But governments aren't perfect. And we look around and we see governments that have failed, and we have governments now that are passing laws that aren't are morally wrong. And so government hasn't been perfect. Actually, it's failed tremendously. But what we're going to talk about today is a government that is perfect, the Kingdom of heaven, OK?
So when Noah came off the ark, God gave him this government. It failed almost before it began, and I think it's the end of that very Chapter 9.
NOAA planted a vineyard, he made wine, he got drunk and he he couldn't even control his own body. So here you have the head of this government and he he gets drunk. And then the next chapter, chapter 10, we find that there was a man who rose up one of Noah's great grandchildren, or I don't know how many generations it was, and he built an empire. Does anyone know who that man was?
The First Empire. Does anyone know more than remember the name of the man who built it?
Go ahead.
Nimrod That's right. His name means the rebel. He was the first one to openly rebel against Noah's government that God gave to him. And he used slave labor to build his empire. In fact, the Bible says that he became a mighty hunter. He became a tyrant. And he he didn't hunt just animals, but he haunted people. He haunted humans and he used them to build his empire.
And and from what I can tell it not only did he build 1 empire, it says that he built Babel which is.
Would later become Babylon, but he also went out and built Asher which later became a Syria. So 2 great world empires came from that man and he was an evil evil person.
And he brought idolatry into the world, and the whole world became corrupted through that idolatry. And then after a number of years, God called one man out of all of that mess, all of that idolatry. God just picked one man, and he called them out of all of that for himself. Does anyone know who that man was?
Go ahead, Abraham. That's right. And the first words we read of God saying to Abraham are get out, get out. And Abraham did get out. It took him some time and fits and starts, but he eventually got out of all that idolatry and God promised him that there was going to come from him a great nation. Does anyone know what that nation was?
Go ahead, Israel, very good. Well, sure enough, 400 years later, Israel was brought up out of the land of Egypt.
And God said that he would place his name in one of their cities. Does anyone know what city that is?
Go ahead.
Maybe, maybe someone else. Go ahead. Jerusalem. That's right. And the Lord would put His authority in that city. So now we have a special kind of government with the Lord's authority there. Well, Israel, the nation of Israel, did not do what God wanted them to do, and they brought in idolatry, beginning with Solomon. Idolatry came into the Kingdom of Israel, and down through the line of kings we go.
As things become worse and worse and worse, he had to allow the 10 northern tribes, the Kingdom of Israel, to be taken captive by the Assyrians. And then in the southern Kingdom, finally a man sat on the throne who was worse than all the other kings that ever sat on the throne of Judah. And his name was Manasseh. And he was so wicked that God said that's it.
You're finished and I'm going to take my authority away.
From the city of Jerusalem. And he said, I am going to wipe Jerusalem as a man, wipe at the dish. It's going to be completely clean. I'm going to take everything away because of the sin that you have committed. And sure enough, as God said, Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians came down and they wiped Jerusalem as a man wipe with a dish.
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And Israel was taken captive and.
God took his government away from Israel and he gave special authority to that empire, to Babylon. So I'm going to, umm, uncover my chart here. And I've asked Zach to put it up on the screen as well because I realized when I got in here that my writing was a little too small. And I also realized that the screen on this side of the room over here is also pretty small. So I apologize, but.
Umm, I hope you can read this but or at least see what I'm trying to tell you about.
But what I want to focus on first of all is that this is a timeline from eternity to eternity, and there's something in the middle. Does anyone know what that is? The center of two eternities? Someone just shouted out the cross. That's right. But what I want to focus on 1St is what we see down here at the bottom. It's an image and it's a A.
Drawing of what we have in Daniel chapter 2.
In Daniel chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar, who was the one that came against Israel and took them captive, had a dream and in that dream he saw a great image and there were five layers in that image and each layer had a different material. The top layer was the head and it was made out of gold and then the chest and arms were made out of silver.
And the belly and thighs were of brass, the legs were of iron, and the feet were iron mixed with clay. And at the end, after he got all the way to the bottom of that image, a great stone comes flying into the scene, crushes the image on its feet, and the whole thing breaks into tiny little pieces, so small that the wind just carries it away. And then that great stone becomes this huge mountain, which I tried to draw here.
No, it's not a volcano.
My wife was wondering where the volcano was in the Bible. It's actually a mountain I'm trying to draw and it fills the whole earth. And then he proceeds in that chapter to give us the interpretation of that dream, and he says as I have drawn here.
Today to Nebuchadnezzar, you Nebuchadnezzar are the head of gold. And so Babylon was that first great holder of power that God gave.
And down through the line, through a series of great empires, that power was passed. First Babylon, then the Medes and Persians, then the Grecians, and finally an empire. See, the first three are actually given to us by name in the book of Daniel. The 4th is described in great detail, but not explicitly named. But we can tell from history that it was the empire of Rome, and Rome held that power.
And so this image describes what we find in the book of Luke is called the Times of the Gentiles. It's not the Jews that hold the power anymore.
That have God's authority, but the Gentiles hold the balance of power. Well. The final and 5th Kingdom is partly iron and partly clay, and a great deal is spoken of in connection with that 5th empire, which is called in prophecy the beast. And I'm not going to go into great detail about prophecy today, it's not my point.
But there has been nothing in this world yet that answers to the description of that fifth empire.
So it is still future OK.
Well, this gravestone is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, and the great mountain that the stone grows into is His Kingdom. And I just want to read to you that verse. It's Daniel chapter 2.
When he is giving the description of this mountain.
Daniel two and verse 44.
And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a Kingdom which shall never be destroyed.
And the Kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all of these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.
So, so now we have a Kingdom that's not set up by Nebuchadnezzar or Alexander the Great or any of these other guys. It's set up by the God of heaven, the capital of this Kingdom that we're talking about over here, shown by this mountain. It's not in Rome, it's not in Sousa, in Persia. It's not in Athens or in Greece. It's not in the city of Rome. The capital is in heaven. The authority is from.
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And that is what we want to talk about today, the Kingdom of heaven.
And so our brother last night spoke about how each one of us is in a family and we have certain responsibilities because we're in families, but we're also in the Kingdom of heaven. And because we're in the Kingdom of heaven, we have certain responsibilities as well.
And I just want to read one more scripture from Daniel that speaks about this wonderful Kingdom. Daniel Chapter 7 and verse 13.
I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him, and there was given him dominion and glory, and the Kingdom that all people, nations, and languages should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His Kingdom, that which shall not be destroyed. All of these other kingdoms, the head of gold, the arms of silver, all are going to come to an end. There's going to be a tremendous of series of events that are going to happen, I believe, very shortly after the Lord comes and calls us home.
In which all these kingdoms, all that we see around us, all of the.
The power.
The engineering, the technology, the ideas of the Western world are all going to be smashed to pieces and they're going to be blown away. And the Kingdom is going to be set up by the God of heaven, which is never going to end. And there's many prophecies in the Old Testament that speak about that wonderful Kingdom. So I have, you might not be able to read it, but I have here Old Testament prophecies.
And they jump forward in time over the cross into the future, and they describe the Kingdom, what I'm calling the Kingdom and manifestation. There's going to be a time when it is obvious it is manifest to everyone that this Kingdom is real and it is functioning and it is in power. We don't live in that day yet, do we? We don't.
See before our eyes a Kingdom.
That is in manifestation. So we're going to talk about that in a minute. And you may be looking at this chart and thinking I think there's something missing on that chart, and if you are, that's a good sign because there is something missing. We're going to get to that in a minute. But first I want to just establish that the Old Testament prophecies speak about a coming Kingdom that's going to last for 1000 years. Does anyone know what we often refer to that Kingdom as?
The Millennium. That's right. And the word Millennium is simply the Latin word for.
1000 years well.
The king of that wonderful Kingdom is the Lord Jesus Christ. And there came a moment in time when the king came into this world, and that's what I have shown here with the Star of David. There came a time when the Lord Jesus was born into this world. He was the rightful king. We we sung about him in this verse, the rightful anointed king, and he came.
And was he received? Was he welcomed? Was he offered the throne that he so justly deserved? No, he was rejected.
Well, when the Lord Jesus came, there was a man who came just before him named John the Baptist and he preached, I'm just going to read you the verse. I don't necessarily want you to to turn to it. There's there's a lot of verses I want to read. In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, repent ye for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. John the Baptist came right here.
Around the time of the Lord and he said the Kingdom of heaven is at hand, which means it's right around the corner.
This glorious Kingdom is right around the corner.
And when the Lord Jesus came, he preached the same thing. He said the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. Jesus sent out his 12 apostles, his 12 disciples, and they said the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. But that message was was rejected. And that that rejection is documented in Matthew's Gospel chapter 8910, especially in 11 and 11:00 and 12:00.
And that message is rejected.
And that's the time that we're living in now. And I have the Lord's rejection color-coded here in orange. There came a time when he was formally rejected by the nation of Israel, I should say, symbolically rejected by the nation of Israel. They formally rejected Him at the cross when they said we will not have this king to reign over us. Well, something very interesting happened in the Lord's teaching and the Lord's ministry when he was rejected.
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In Matthew chapter 12, beginning in Matthew chapter 13, he stopped saying the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. He stopped saying the Kingdom of heaven is right around the corner. He changed his words and instead he began to say the Kingdom of heaven is like unto for the Kingdom of heaven will be like and he started to give.
What I have written up here, the 10 similitudes of the Kingdom.
And instead of saying the Kingdom of heaven is at hand, he said, I'm going to tell you what it's going to be like. And part of what the Lord Jesus said about the Kingdom of heaven is that there was going to be evil that was going to be allowed to go on. Now think about this for just a minute. This is a very important point. The Old Testament prophecy Speaking of this thousand year king Kingdom.
Say that evil will be judged every morning, but when Jesus said, the Kingdom of heaven will be liked unto.
And he talked about terrorists, evil persons being brought in and not being removed until the end. How does that fit? How does it fit that the Old Testament prophecies say evils judged every morning, but Jesus said evil is going to be allowed to continue. Well, the answer is that Jesus is teaching that this Kingdom, this thousand year Kingdom is going to be postponed.
It's going to be put on hold for a a period of time.
Does anyone know how long? Approximately rounded to the nearest thousand years. OK.
How long has that Kingdom been postponed, anyone?
No one. It's it's pretty easy. 2000 years. Thank you. And so my chart here is missing something. And So what I want to do is slide this Kingdom off to the right by 2000 years. It took me a little bit to figure this out.
And then I have something I need to put in the middle. I apologize for those who can't really see this. Thanks, Zach. Zach is putting it up on the screen. Umm, and please come and look at it after.
Umm, I think I need to do a little bit of taping.
That'll that'll get us pretty close. And so this period is 2000 years and all during this 2000 years is the time when the king is rejected.
And one thing you're probably gonna ask is that guy's legs just got really long.
And that's, that's true. So basically Rome, the empire of Rome was in power when the Lord Jesus was crucified. In fact, they were the ones that sanctioned his death. It was a Roman death warrant that was issued to the Lord Jesus. Well, the Roman Empire was stayed in power for a great number of years after that, but eventually it broke into pieces. But who is still, generally speaking?
Running the world right now, it is the vestiges, the.
The leftover pieces of that Roman Empire. So I just extended the legs, umm, So hopefully you're not too bothered by that, umm?
One thing I should know is that you see in blue here the Kingdom, but not in manifestation, the Kingdom. Another expression that we use is the Kingdom in mystery. I'm going to talk about what that means in a minute. So the Kingdom and manifestation was postponed, but there came a moment when the Lord Jesus had perfectly completed the work of Calvary and God brought him back to His right hand.
And he said to him.
You sit down at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
And when he ascended back into heaven, it says a certain man went into a far country to receive for himself a Kingdom and to return. When Jesus ascended back through the clouds into heaven, God gave him a Kingdom, not a Kingdom and manifestation. His enemies have not yet been made his footstool, but he has been given a Kingdom, and he wants those who are in that Kingdom to acknowledge his.
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Absolute authority over.
Our lives and over our actions. If you get nothing else from this, understand this, that you are in the Kingdom of heaven. All those who have made a profession of Christ are in the Kingdom of heaven and He is King and He, this is the subject of the Lordship of Christ and he has absolute authority over your life and over my life.
Well, I just wanted to show that in green I have in parentheses the church.
You'll notice that the church is not the same thing as the Kingdom. Sometimes we might be talking a little too fast that we might confuse them, but the church is really something different. The Kingdom is something that's on this earth, although it's ruled from heaven, but the church is something that is entirely a heavenly thing. And you'll notice too, that the the church has different start and end dates.
The Kingdom began with the ascension of Christ the Church.
Began on the day of Pentecost. Is that helpful? We can see they actually have different start dates. So they're two different things. The apostle Paul primarily speaks of the Church of God, and that's not what I want to talk about today. That's a wonderful subject. I want to speak about the Kingdom well.
The Old Testament prophecies look far forward to the millennial reign of Christ, but what the Lord Jesus taught about the Kingdom in his lifetime.
Has to do with the time that we live in the Kingdom in mystery. OK, So what I would like to do next is briefly go through.
I'm gonna check my time here.
My time is is half gone. My original aspiration was to go through all of the 10 similitudes, but it's not going to happen. And So what I would really like to focus on is the last four similitudes of the Kingdom of Heaven, because my wife is very helpful in pointing out I need to keep my stuff practical and the last four similitudes.
Are very, very practical for us.
When we want to know what is our responsibility in the Kingdom of heaven, those last four similitudes are paramount. We need to understand them. But I have a disease, and that disease is having to cover the entire subject. So I do want to give just a very brief overview of the first six similitudes before we get to those four.
And as I have shown here, a helpful way to look at the 10 similitudes.
Of the Kingdom of heaven is broken down into three parts, a group of three, another group of three, and then the final four. And the first group has to do with what Satan is trying to accomplish. Satan is is no dummy and he knows that Christ received the Kingdom and he's started from that moment to try to corrupt the Kingdom. And so that is what he is working on in those first three.
Similitudes and he uses man and man's failure to do that.
But then we find in 4-5 and six that God is sovereign and his and his sovereign grace. He is over ruling the efforts of Satan and he is going to have fruit for himself. And we're going to see briefly.
How He is in His sovereignty, bringing blessing in spite of man's failure. And then in the last four we have What is our work? How are we to conduct ourselves in the Kingdom of heaven?
So before I do that, was there any questions on the chart before we get into the similitudes?
Any anyone have any questions, something I can try to explain a little bit better? Go ahead, Barrett.
Old Testament Saints.
Umm, I believe yes, they will be in the Kingdom and manifestation, the millennial Kingdom. There's going to be two compartments in that millennial Kingdom. There's going to be an earthly compartment that is called in Matthew 13, the Kingdom of the Son of Man. And there's a heavenly compartment which is called the Kingdom of their Father because Old Testament Saints have died and have become heavenly Saints by the fact that they have departed this earth.
They're going to be in that heavenly department called the Kingdom of their Father. So they will be and they will not umm, umm, be. They'll be more closely connected with heaven and with where the authority is flowing down from, which is from heaven in that coming Kingdom. But but yes, they will be. And there are verses that would show that, that in the Kingdom of heaven, those are going to come from the east and from the West and sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So they will be there.
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Is there anything else I can clear up?
All right, so let's move on to the umm, the 10 similitudes. So we're going to go to Matthew chapter 13, and I want to just read one verse to help us with this.
While we're turning there, does everyone know what a simile is? I learned this in English class in middle school. Assembly is a comparison of two things with the use of the words like or as and. So a parable that's a simile, a comparison between the Kingdom of heaven and and a story that's given to us.
The old fashioned word is similitude, and so that's what it simply is, is a comparison between some.
Figurative description and what the Kingdom of heaven is like. So there are 10 similitudes, but there's another name given to them in verse 11 of Matthew 13.
He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven. And so these 10 similitudes are also can also be called mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven, because there are things about this 2000 years that in which we live that are.
Not easy to understand. And there are things that those in this world, those who do not have faith, don't understand.
That Christ has received the Kingdom, why does he allow evil to continue? Why does he allow evil to continue among Christians? Why? It doesn't make any sense to those without faith. But he has given to us these mysteries so that we can understand them, so they're no longer mysteries to us.
And that's why I believe these are very important. They answer some of those deep questions. But why does God allow evil and those type of things? And is there a silver lining to all of this that is is going on today? And the answer, of course, is yes, Yes, there is. Well.
Matthew chapter 13 starts out with a parable that's called the Parable of the Sower. And you might be wondering, is that a similitude of the Kingdom of heaven? Well, it does not say the Kingdom of heaven.
Is like or as the sower. So it's really not a similitude of the Kingdom of heaven. And I assume everyone here is familiar with the parable of the sower. And it's very important to be, and I'll tell you why it says in Mark's Gospel that the parable of the sower is the key to understanding all parables. Very important that we understand it. But basically, you know how that man went out that sower and he cast his seed four times and it fell into four different types of ground.
And only when it fell into good ground did it produce fruit. Well, I believe that the central thrust of that parable is that the only way that there can be fruit for God is if his word is received into our into our hearts through our conscience. Our heart has to be prepared to receive the Word of God. And when that happens, there can be fruit for God.
And it's given to us in Matthew's Gospel and Mark's Gospel.
And in Luke's gospel, and in each case, there's a little bit of a different emphasis. I could mention that, but we don't have time. But generally speaking, that is, I believe the thrust of that parable is that the Word of God has to be received into a heart that is prepared by God, by the Spirit of God. Just as the girdle of truth is the first piece of the armor, truth practically applied, so the sower is the first parable.
And the key to understanding all parables, if we're going to read this book and we're not going to apply it to ourselves, we're wasting our time. It's the first one. When we read this book, we need to say, this is for me. I need to take what God is saying and apply it to myself, OK.
Well, the first similitude is that of the wheat and the chairs. I have the references written down on the right for you. I'm not going to have time to turn to these. We're just going to be out of time. So the first one is the wheat and the tares, and in that parable, a man.
Seeds in his field and he has some men who are in charge of looking over his field and while he is, while they are sleeping, which they shouldn't be doing, an enemy comes and he sews the seeds of what the King James calls tares. Or it should be in critical translations, Darnell, or as I understand it, ryegrass. So ryegrass, as far as I know.
00:35:21
Maybe someone can tell us better but umm, I'm speaking out here in farm country So what do I know but.
It looks a lot like wheat and it's very, very hard to distinguish, but it's not real. And so this is something that we learn is that in the Kingdom of heaven, not everyone who's in the Kingdom has real, genuine faith.
There are those who are only in the Kingdom by profession. They are baptized to the name of Christ. They call themselves Christians, but they don't have faith.
And how did they get there? Well, it says that men slept. That is, man was responsible and he failed with his responsibility. And Satan came in and he sold these ones. And that's how they're here. But it's part of Satan's plan to corrupt it, and this his, umm, way of corrupting it. Well, when the men see the two growing up, the wheat and the tears, they say to the man who owns the field, do you want us to go and rip out all the tears? That's the logical thing to do.
We we were sleeping.
Uh, an enemy came and sold this. Let us go out and fix the mistake. And he says don't do that because if you go out to pull up the tears, you'll accidentally tear out the wheat as well. You are not capable of distinguishing those who have faith from those who only have a profession. And so if the church if Christianity and Christianity, if we set about to.
Take those who are not real and do away with them. We're going to make errors.
I believe taking a terror or a week out of this, out of the field is, is the idea of removing them from the world because later he says the field is the world. So you might say, Josh, none of us here are thinking about hunting down those who are just making a profession and doing away with them and killing them. You say nobody here is planning to do that.
I realize that, but the Church has done that. They have taken it upon themselves in past centuries to hunt down the terrors and to root them out. And in the dark ages, the Church.
Burned heretics, so-called heretics at the stake and you know what, just as the Lord said, they made some mistakes and many that they burned were those who really had faith they were wheat, they were not terrorists. So it is not our job to.
To take out those who are evil. But this does not mean that in the local assembly we're not responsible to judge evil. I just want to make that point. 1St Corinthians 5 is very clear that God judges those that are without. We'll leave the we'll leave the tears for his judgment, but we are responsible to judge those that are within. Just wanted to make that point. Well, he says at the end of the age.
All this mess is going to be sorted out. First thing that's going to happen is my my harvestman, who he says are the angels are going to go. They're going to round up the tears.
Put them in bundles. Then they're going to take the wheat and gather it into the granary. That's a picture of the rapture. When we're gathered into the granary, those who really have faith. And then I'm going to take the tears and throw them into the fire. That's going to happen at the appearing of Christ.
When he comes and the angels will go through and sever the wicked from among the just one shall be taken for judgment and the other left. So that's the we and the tares one line summary. Satan has brought in evil persons into Christendom, but God is going to sort it all out in the end. OK, the next one is the mustard seed. I'm going to go more quickly. The mustard seed.
Is a tiny little seed that gets planted in the ground.
And it grows into, in this parable, a great tree. Now, I did a little bit of research on mustard seeds, and they do grow into a good size Bush, about 8 or 9 feet tall, which is remarkable growth that one tiny little seed would grow into a Bush, you know, yay tall, I guess a little taller than that. But this one grows into a great tree. This is unnatural growth. This is growth that was not in the mind of God. This is something that happened through man's failure.
Activity this what started out so small grew into what we call Christendom, this overgrown monstrosity. And what happens is the birds of the air come and they find shelter in this great tree. And he tells us elsewhere that the birds of the air are Satan's demons, evil spirits. And So what happened is.
00:40:10
In the in the era of Constantine, back in the three hundreds, late three hundreds.
He eliminated the, the persecution that Christians were going through and he made it, umm, effectively not officially the religion of the Roman Empire. And suddenly it became popular to be a Christian. And so basically a little tiny seed sprang into this huge tree. And what happens when Christianity is popular is that many come in and a lot of things and ideas and.
Come in that are not of God.
So that's the mustard seed. The next one is the HID 11. So this sounds a bit negative. It's because we're talking about what Satan is doing. Well, the next is the HID 11. A woman takes a little pinch of yeast and she hides it in three measures of flour, and yeast grows and it spreads. And that's what happened with this, with these three measures of flour that you started real small because it wasn't taken out. It grew until it spread through the whole thing.
And 11 in the word of God is evil. It speaks of evil. We know that because the apostle Paul says, know ye not? A little leavened leavens the whole lump. And he's talking about evil. He says it twice, once in First Corinthians with regard to moral evil, and once again in Galatians with regard to doctrinal evil. Evil, if it is not judged, spreads like 11. It's got to be taken out.
Well.
That is what Satan has done. He has sown evil doctrine, concerning especially I believe, the person of Christ, and it has spread from one end to the other. How sad. But then we get to the 4th and things take a turn for the better. Here we're talking about God's work and in the force similitude we find that a man is walking past the field.
That perhaps many men have walked by and they've seen nothing.
But just a field. You see a lot of that when you drive through farm country fields. But this man saw what no one else could see, and that was a treasure hidden in the field. And that treasure, I believe, speaks of believers, you and I, who have, I trust, by the grace of God, faith. And he sees us as treasure, and he values us. And he goes, he sees the treasure, he covers it back up so that no one perhaps will see it. And then he goes and sells all that he has that he.
By that treasure, in the same way the Lord sees you, and he sees me and he sees value, you say. But isn't Christendom just a big field full of tears and wheat? And isn't it just this big overgrown tree with evil spirits roosting in the branches? And isn't it just this 11 bucket of flour?
Yes, but there are those who are his treasure and they're hidden in the field and he covers them back up because the time of our manifestation is not until the time of Christ's manifestation. During this time the King is in rejection and so are we. But there's going to come a time when he is going to unveil that treasure that's going to be at His appearing and it says.
That when He will appear, we also will appear with Him in glory. Well, the next one is the Pearl of Great Price.
There's a man who's looking for goodly or beautiful pearls, and he finds one that's just off the charts. It's the most beautiful one he's ever seen. And again he goes sells all that he has that he might buy that Pearl and have it for himself. Well, if the treasure was individual believers, the Pearl is one thing. A treasure can have many small parts, but the Pearl is one.
And I believe that speaks to us of the church.
It's in the Kingdom. It's not the Kingdom itself, but a man. The Lord Jesus Christ has found his Pearl, that one object that completely fills and satisfies his heart, and he has sold all that he might buy it. It says that Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.
And then the the 6th one is that of the the dragnet. And what we have here is a great net, a scheme. It's a huge net that's trawled behind fishing boats and it sweeps down through the ocean and it picks up all kinds of fish and brings in this huge haul of fishes. And it's a picture of the gospel going out into the sea of the Gentiles, the 2000 years and bringing in this huge hall of fishes.
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And when they get to the shore, they find that there are lots and lots of good fish. But there's also.
Lots and lots of bad fish. We might say, oh, oh, does that mean we have to throw the whole thing out? But what we have in this is that he has workmen that are on the shore when this Hall of Fishes comes in and they are taking the bad, they're taking the good, I should say, and putting them into baskets, vessels. And so the whole net, the gospel net, that has brought in many into Christianity.
Has brought in some that aren't real.
Kinda like those tears, except more benign, I think than the tears, but they've come in. But it hasn't ruined the whole fishing trip. You might say the gospel going out for 2000 years is not a waste. And the way God is, what God is using is she's using evangelists and he's using shepherds when someone gets saved to come in and help them to be separated from the world, separated from those bad fish to be useful to him. So it's God's sovereignty and each of those.
Things over ruling the activity and work of of Satan. OK so.
Satan's work, God's work, but what about us? What are we to be doing? So the first one I want to look at is the 7th, which is in Matthew 18.
I guess I'm going to have to just give a summary of these four as well. Sorry about that.
Well, Matthew 18 gives us the seven similitude. Peter asks the Lord in verse 21, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Peter under the law would not have to give even 7 times. Peter thought he was being very generous. Should I forgive him seven times? That seems pretty generous. The Lord says until 7 * 70 * 7.
Which is basically an infinite number of forgiveness. If you forgave someone that many times, believe me, it would feel like Infinity. And the Lord is saying here that forgiveness in the Kingdom of heaven needs to be infinite. It needs to be unlimited. We're going to talk about this a little bit more, but basically I don't have time to read it all. He says the Kingdom of heaven is like unto a king, which would take account of his servants, and he has one servant that owes him.
A tremendous debt in today's dollars. I believe the 10,000 talents debt that he owed is something on the order of $60 million.
And at a penny a day, which we find in the next similitude is how much approximately they made a denarius a day. It would take him 1600 lifetimes to pay that back. A tremendous debt, impossible to pay back. The king calls him up and he says have patience with me, I'll pay it back. Was that true? Could he ever pay that debt back? Never in a million years.
Never in 1600 lifetimes he couldn't do it.
Well, the king having compassion, this man didn't even know how bad his debt was, so he forgave him.
And then this man goes out when he finds one of his fellow servants who owes him 100 pence, who owes him 100 days labor. That's a pretty big debt. Three months worth of work.
And he says, give me patient, have patience with me, I'll pay you back. Was that a lie? I don't think so. Three months worth of of wages is something you actually can pay back if you work hard and you save. This is something that's reasonable. It's tiny in comparison with the first step. It's almost nothing. What does he do? It says he takes them by the throat and he cuts off his air supply. So he throttles him.
And he casts him into prison.
Until he should pay everything. So this man had just been forgiven this massive debt and he goes out and finds someone who owes him just a little bit and he throws him into prison. Has no patience and no forgiveness for this one. Well, it works its way back to the king word of this. And he takes that man and he cast him to the tormentors because of what he had done.
And at the end of the chapter the Lord says.
So likewise shall my heavenly Father do unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not everyone, his brother, their trespasses. Well, each one of us owes the King a great debt. We have been forgiven, frankly forgiven, more than we will ever know.
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And.
We may have those. We most likely do. Probably everyone does have someone that we know, a fellow believer, someone maybe in our home assembly that has offended us. They are like the 100 pence debtor. They have offended us.
And we make a big deal about those offenses sometimes, don't we? But it's nothing in comparison with the offense that we have offended God.
And what we have here is that the forgiveness that he had given to this man, he takes back, he revokes his forgiveness. Now, let me ask a question here. We've been forgiven our sins so that we can go to heaven and be with the Lord Jesus for all eternity. Is God ever going to revoke his forgiveness? Can we be lost again? No. So it's not talking about that kind of forgiveness. What this is talking about is something called governmental forgiveness.
It's mentioned I counted once, I believe at least as many times.
As eternal forgiveness, which is so that we can go to be with Christ in heaven at least as many times as that is mentioned in the Bible. This is something that's little understood and I can tell you that because I didn't understand it all too well when I was young. But basically it works like this. There's a government of God when you do bad things. He has the prerogative to punish in his government to give us the consequences for our sins, but in His grace.
In the Kingdom of heaven.
He is so gracious that he just forgives those things.
And there are times when there are other principles involved when He will not forgive and He will allow us to suffer those consequences. If you bad mouth to your mom, maybe the next minute you fall down the stairs and break your leg or something like that, that might be the government of God in your life. But generally speaking, how many times have we done things and He has exempted us from that, those consequences. 10,000 talents.
Can you imagine if God allowed all of the consequences governmentally of our sins to fall upon us? We're not talking about.
What the Lord Jesus did on the cross and how we're going to get to heaven and how our security is eternal, no.
What happens is, he says if you don't forgive your brother, if you are unwilling to give that up, that bitterness that you feel towards your brother, your sister, then I am going to revoke my forgiveness, my governmental forgiveness on you, and you'll be cast to the tormentors. And you know, there are Christians today that are living.
In, metaphorically speaking, living in hell, I, I, I hope that's not too strong an expression. They're cast to the tormentors. They're suffering from anxiety, from depression. These are the kind of things that they're not dealt with, can get passed down to generation and generation. We must be willing to forgive one another. God is saying here that my forgiveness and the Kingdom of heaven is unlimited.
But I want yours to be unlimited as well.
It's the foundation of our relationship with Him as grace and forgiveness, and it needs to be there with our brethren. Wow. I'm sorry I'm going to run out of time, but I'll just summarize these last three. In chapter 20, we have the parable of the vineyard. A man goes out to find workers for his vineyard, and he goes out at 6:00 in the morning, and there are some guys who are ready to work.
And they have a contract there which says I'll work a day on your vineyard.
If you give me a penny for the day, denarius for the day, and he signs on the line, he's got a contract, a penny a day. And they go to work. He comes out three hours later at 9:00. He finds some guys who are standing there doing nothing. He says, do you want to work? And they say, Yep, we'll work. And he says no contracts to be signed here. I'll give you what I see at the end of the day. And they say, OK, we'll take that, No contract, I'm going to work. Trusting you that you will pay me. What?
CFET.
And they go to work and he goes out at 12 noon, and he goes out at 3:00 PM, and then he goes out at 5:00 PM, one hour before closing time. And he does the same thing at the end of the day. He calls them in and he pays them off. And he pays the one who came in for only one hour. He only worked one hour in the vineyard. And he pays them a penny. He gives him the same amount that the ones at the beginning of the day had contracted for all the way down through. And he pays them in reverse.
And at the very end, he pays the ones who came in at six PM, 6:00 AM, served for 12 hours, born, as they say, the burden in the heat of the day. And he gives them their penny and they complain and they have a real problem with him because of that. Well, the Lord is teaching that He wants our service for him to be not based on a legal attitude. He doesn't want us to serve with the idea that I'm going to do this much for him.
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And he's going to give me a reward. He wants us to serve with the spirit of grace and contentment that I'm going to serve him because I owe everything to him. And even if there's no reward, I'm going to serve him. You know, we speak a lot about the judgment seat of Christ. And it's a wonderful subject. I'm not knocking it at all. But you know, this parable is the.
Is the perfect balance for that subject because sometimes I wonder if we get an idea that we're laboring for a reward, it's not to be our motive. We're not laboring down here so that we can get some reward. It's an encouragement to us. And He will not forget those who serve him, and he will reward those who serve him. But the lesson from this similitude is this, God retains His sovereignty when it comes to giving out reward.
And they're going to be surprises that the judgment seat of Christ. Not surprises because of how much someone worked, but surprises because of the sovereign grace of God. Amazing.
You may have only served one hour he may surprise you he may give you a reward you never deserve dreamed of and it's just because of his sovereign grace. So we're to serve with contentment in the spirit of grace, not looking for reward then the.
9th is the parable of the wedding feast. There's a great deal that we could speak about there, but what I wanted to bring out of that umm.
There's so much there, but is the fact that the king sends He wants to have a wedding feast for his son for the honor of his son.
Is that clock?
Maybe my watch is off. I'm good, OK?
All right, sorry, my watch is really fast.
Umm.
We're not going to, we're not going to go into a lot of detail, but he wants to have a hold the wedding feast for the honor of his son. And it speaks of how God has as his chief purpose the honor of his son.
And so he has already sent invitations out, and he sends his servants to tell those who are invited it's time to come on in. And God had already sent invitations out to the children of Israel, to the Jews. And he sent his servants, John the Baptist and his disciples out. And they said to Israel, they went to the 12 tribes, to the lost sheep of the House of Israel, and they said, it's time to come on in.
The King is ready to serve his feast and they rejected it. We don't want to.
We don't wanna come.
The king is not hindered by that, he says to them.
Go again and tell them that everything's been made ready. They didn't say that the first time, but tell them my oxygen, my fat links have been killed. Everything has been prepared. That speaks of those who went out again to the Jews after the cross. God's preparation had been done. His oxen, his fatlings had been killed at the cross. The work of Christ is complete, and he says all the preparation has been done. Come on in.
This time, they violently reject that.
And they beat and kill some of his servants.
The king responds.
By sending his forces to destroy their city. That's what happened in 70 AD when God sent his forces the Roman army, using them to destroy the city of Jerusalem, because they had rejected those who went out after the day of Pentecost with all the grace, all the signs of the Spirit of God.
He destroyed their city. But you know, even that didn't stop him. Remember, he wants to have a marriage feast for his son. He wants his house full because it's all about his son. That's his objective. And So what does he do? He says go out. Those who were invited were not worthy. Go out into the highways, into the hedges, call them to come in. Those who were not invited, go to places where no invitation ever went and invite them to come in. That my house.
Might be full. And that is what has happened, firstly through the apostle Paul and then down through 2000 years, the gospel has gone out to those who were not invited, those who had no invitation, and they have come in and you know there's going to come a day when his house is going to be full.
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What is our portion? What are we to take from this?
We can be used to spread the good news that God wants to have a wedding feast for his son. He's going to have one. We could be like those servants who take the invitations out to those who were not worthy. We can go around to our neighbors, neighbors and our coworkers and and spread that good news. And we need to do it with this thought in mind that it's all about Christ, that God is going to have a full house.
Whether this person accepts or whether they don't.
Because it's all about him. Well, at the end of that parable, there's a man there who has on who did not avail himself of a wedding garment. You know, this king, when he invites these guys in from the highways. I mean, these are homeless people, right? You know, you see them sleeping under the bridges. They don't have a tuxedo. I mean, they don't own a thing.
At the door, he would provide a wedding garment for everyone who would come in and this one man.
He looks at that wedding garment and he says, you know, I think what I've got on is good enough. And he walks right in to a feast that is designed to honor his Son. But by his actions he dishonors him. And there are those who have come professively to the Lord Jesus Christ, refusing to put on the provided garment. They have refused to be washed in the blood of the Lamb.
The king spies him immediately and he goes to him and he says to his servant, to his umm, servants bind him handed foot and cast him into outer darkness. So we're to be taking the gospel out, but we're to remember to that they need to put on their wedding garment. They need to. We can't, we have, we can't preach a bloodless gospel. We have to remember it's the work of Christ that makes us fit for that wedding feast.
Just a side note, the word servant which is used when each of those three times when the servants go out to preach the gospel.
Is different. It's it's the word for slave and it's different than the word servant at the end when the servants bind him hand and foot. We're not going to be used to bind those who reject Christ and cast them into outer darkness. That's going to be for the angels to do. I just see, I think it's beautiful the accuracy of Scripture. You probably knew that we weren't going to be used for that purpose, but I just thought I'd mention it. Matthew 25 is the final similitude of the Kingdom of heaven, and this is the parable.
10 versions and I believe the primary thought that I would like to bring out from this is that as it says in the last verse, verse 13 of the of the parable. Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour we're in. The Son of Man cometh.
That we are to be watching for the Lord's return.
We are to be watching for the Lord's return. Well, in this similitude of the Kingdom, 10 young ladies, virgins, go out to meet the bridegroom.
Again, this is the Kingdom we're talking about. So they're not the bride. We're not talking about the church here, we're talking about the Kingdom. They go to meet the bridegroom, but they aren't the bride. This is the Kingdom. But anyhow, each of them has a light.
And half of them, five of them, did not take any oil with their light. They had some, perhaps some residual oil that was in their lamp or stuff that was in the Wick or whatever, and it was burning, but they had no reserve of oil.
And then they all lay down and fell asleep. Not really a good thing when you're going to meet the bridegroom to fall asleep.
Then a call is heard. Behold, the bridegroom go ye forth to meet him, and they all wake up and then the they find out that some of them had oil and some of them didn't. And then they all go to the, uh, wedding and the bridegroom receives in those who have the oil and he rejects eternally.
Those who do not have the oil well, what does this speak to us of? Well, I believe it has, as I said before, to do with keeping the Lord Jesus Christ before our souls and His soon return.
In the you can say you can see from this parable 4 distinct stages.
In connection with the Kingdom of Heaven during this time of mystery Christendom, 4 distinct stages #1 The 10 virgins with lights go out to meet the bridegroom.
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They have a testimony in the early church. They go forth to meet the Lord. They're waiting for the Lord to come. They have a testimony and then time goes on and they sink down and sleep. That's the second stage. The church lost the hope of the Lord's coming. Do you guys know? I, I hope you guys know that for 1700 years or so, the church did not even know.
That the Lord was coming for his Saints.
They knew something of the appearing of Christ, some of them, but you know that for 1700 years, the majority of the 2000 years that the church had lost that hope. That's what we have here. They sunk down and sleep. The call was they're they're their original Commission was to go forth to meet him, be waiting for him, be watching for him. They stopped doing that for 1700 years.
Wow. And then the grace of God.
A call.
Behold the bridegroom going forth to meet him that call.
Sounded out beginning in England in the 1820s and 30s, and sounded out across Europe, across North America, and around the whole world. Behold, the Bridegroom. The Lord is coming again. Go out to meet Him.
Live your lives as if you were coming today, because perhaps today that is the call. Behold the bridegroom. It's not so much an event that our translation says, umm, the old bridegroom cometh, but in critical translations, it's just behold the bridegroom. Go ye forth to meet him while that cry was sounded out.
And the effect was all of those versions arose.
And the whole profession of Christianity woke up.
Those who are real, and even those who are false became aware that the Lord's return was eminent and there was a tremendous, uh, resurgence of gospel work and exhortation to go and buy oil.
It became evident that there were those who were real and those that weren't and it's imperative that we have the oil. Oil in Scripture is the is the type of the Spirit of God or verses to show that.
Well, they're going to buy oil. How sad they're on their way.
They start, but while they're gone, while they leave, the bridegroom comes and they're too late. Finally the bridegroom comes. Well, those four stages, the early church going out to meet the bridegroom. The second stage, they, they all slumbered and slept. The church sank down to the level of this world. The third stage was the recovery of the truth. Behold the bridegroom going out to meet him. And then finally the bridegroom comes.
We're past the third stage. Think of that.
We are past the third stage, the cry. Behold, the bridegroom has already gone out. What does that mean? It means the fourth stage is the only one left. The Lord is coming soon. I I really believe.
Watch therefore, for ye know, neither the day nor the hour, or in the Son of Man cometh in the measure that we have the Lord Jesus Christ before us, and in the measure that we're watching for His soon return. It will have an effect on our lives. It will cause our light to shine again as we go forth to meet Him. Well, we're in the Kingdom of heaven. The King is rejected.
But you and I are called to.
Recognize His absolute authority over our lives. And that's why I want to sing the last two verses of #134 just to call attention to verse four. That coming day when Christ is going to be given His rightful place, when royal robes will invest him, royal splendors will crown his brow. But now, Now before that time.
Christ of God, our souls confess the King and sovereign.
Even now, that's what we're talking about today, owning him as king and sovereign. Even now, let's say the last two verses of 134.
Blind man.
Thy Father's heart is the one that I've done yet and done.
Shall we pray? Loving God and our Father, we just give thanks for this opportunity to have Thy Word open, to have before us the subject of the Kingdom of heaven. We pray that we might be found having that forgiving spirit towards our fellow believers, that we found serving contentedly and with the Spirit of grace for our Lord Jesus Christ. That we might be found preaching the gospel, presenting that invitation to those who are not worthy, that we might be found watching.
Waiting for our Lord's return. May we have these things before us and put them into practice in our lives. In the worthy name of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.