Before we look at the next parable, it is well to notice the change from the sea shore to the house. The multitude sent away—only disciples with Jesus. This gives occasion for our Lord giving likenesses of the kingdom very different from those given to the people outside. The multitude gathered on the sea shore heard now for the first time the truths of the coming kingdom expressed in parables, insomuch that the disciples wondered and asked, “Why speakest thou to them in parables?” The last was that Israel at that time was rejected, and was addressed, according to the prophet, in parables and in dark sayings. That is, the consequence of their rejection of Christ was beginning to be seen. The time was now come when they should hear, and not understand; see, and not perceive. All that was needed to maintain them in the place God had given was there present. Messiah was there, and repentance had been preached by Him and by John. But they were disobedient; they would not have Jesus. They rejected Him; He rejects them. The Lord Jesus tells them of the kingdom and the form it would take through his absence—the consequence of their rejection. But their eyes are closed, and their ears are dull, and their hearts waxed gross, “lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.” Judicial blindness and hardness of heart are sent upon them. Such was and is still the solemn condition of the nation unto whom Messiah came.
But there was a remnant who had received the testimony, and to them the mysteries are unfolded. They are the chosen ones, who not only escape the judgment fallen upon the nation, but are brought into a greater nearness to Jesus. It is now a family tie. The Jews had contemptuously said, “Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without desiring to speak with thee.” Whether it was so or not, it showed their contempt for their Messiah. But it gives occasion to our Lord to declare the closer intimacy which would henceforth subsist between Himself and His disciples. “Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren. For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” The disciples now take that place.
They had said, “Why speakest thou in parables?” and then the Lord explained in the hearing of the multitude the first parable, which is not a similitude of the kingdom, but which, among other things, gives warning to individual souls and enforces it in these words, “Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.” The judgment upon the nation (v. 11-15), the blessing upon the remnant (v. 16, 17), and the application of the parable (v. 18-23) from the solemn word spoken, if not directly to the multitude, yet in their hearing.
But when they were gone, and Jesus and his disciples are in the house, at once we see the confidence inspired by love and conscious nearness. “Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.” Jesus declares the parable. More, He adds what the parable did not contain, and this is ever the way with the Spirit of God. If He gives visions or parables, he never gives a bare explanation, but always adds important truth.
What a place this is! In the house with Jesus—the world outside. Now there is communion. Jesus declares the parable spoken outside to the multitude. To them the kingdom was likened to a man. To the disciples it is the Son of man. To them it is not given to know; to the disciples it is, and they are blessed. But to explain ever so fully the dark sayings spoken to the multitude is not all the blessedness. Not only are the disciples told that the harvest is the end of the age; that “the son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth: then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father;” that the true king Christ, the Son of man, will return and establish his kingdom in power and glory on the earth; but He tells them of a secret thing, hidden in the counsels of the Father from all eternity, of a highly prized remnant that would be found in the midst of the general corruption—so prized that they would be a treasure, a pearl—so valued that all else would be given up so that the merchant might secure it. What a display of Christ’s love for the Church. What a testimony of His love for the disciples, to open out to them the counsels of His abiding love, the depths and riches of His grace. But this testimony is for us also. This scene in the house is illustrative of our place of nearness and communion. Net that it sets forth all the privileges we have in being brought nigh to God; but to be with Jesus in spirit is our place now. A Christian may be occupied outwardly with earning the bread that perishes, and that with much anxiety and pain. This forms no barrier to communion with the Lord. The only barrier to this is peace not realized, the heart not at rest. This removed by the grace of God the believer is able to enter in to realize his place in the house with Jesus, and to learn God’s counsels about His Son. For the Lord does not speak to them of their individual salvation. There was no room for doubt; they were already inside. But He reveals to them—to us—His own joy in the hid treasure, His determination to secure the pearl of great price at all cost. And when the end comes, in a third parable, the care with which the good are put into vessels.
So God told faithful Abraham that He was about to consume the cities of the plain. So again Jesus told His disciples, just before He suffered, “I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.” We are the depositaries of God’s counsels. What a position for such as we are!
How can a child of God, who knows his father’s will about the course of this world, and its awful doom, maintain the pretensions and join in the undertakings of men of this world to reform the world, to make it a pleasant place? Can he be deceived by their talk of amelioration, of spreading civilization as a means for the world’s conversion? Alas! that any should so far forget, not only their place of separation from this world, its fair appearances, as well as its foulness, but that the irrevocable judgment of God is pronounced upon it, as being a thing that will was worse and worse until its wickedness culminates in open war against the Lord, and that to aid and abet the world in any of its plausible attempts is to give the lie to God’s word. Let the Christian seek to gather souls out of the world to Christ. This will not only be the saving of a soul, but it will be a testimony to the world that we know that its judgment is sure and near.
The same solemn words are uttered to the disciples which were to the multitude, “who hath ears to hear let him hear.” Surely there never was a time when it behooved us to take more heed to the word of God than the present.
God, in His grace, hath opened our ears, and He hath spoken plainly, definitely, about us, about the world, and our place in it. May we hear, and be obedient.