Parable Of The Kingdom

Matthew 13:24 – 58 --- PARABLE OF THE KINGDOM

ILLUSTRATION:

Story of Zig Zeagur:He was encouraging a friend to go to church but his friend did not want to because he said, the church is full of hypocrites. Zig Zeagur said, “Well, that is okay. There is room for one more!”

This collection of parables is very interesting. My pastor used to mention of his Bible teacher who used to say, “You should not teach the parables of the Kingdom, until you have been in the ministry for 30 years!” I think he said this because when you are in ministry for a while, you begin to understand the dynamics of the Kingdom.

There is probably several ways of taking these passages.

All these passages like the one on the mustard seed – you think it talks of the church that is a tiny group of people just twelve disciples and then on the day of Pentecost to 120 people and today the gospel has spread to many parts! Wow!

Or you put little bit of yeast in the dough and whole bit is leavened. Very tiny bit of yeast and such big results!!

But the problem is Jesus has already interpreted these parables and these images are not very good! Jesus is describing the church and not the world. He has told us the field is the world – and when you hear the word world, I think of John 3:16, “God so loved the world…” John goes on to say that not everybody is saved, but everybody is condemned and those who believe in Jesus inherit eternal life.

So the Kingdom of God is not necessarily the world, but it is those who receive the Word. The Kingdom of God is like this field, the world where the seed has been planted, and those who have received the seed make up the kingdom. But in the field, you have the good and bad seed. So we’ll take groups of parables together as they go in categories.

The parables of the weeds, the yeast, the mustard seed and the net are all the same. The details differ but the overall points are the same.

Few points from these parables:

There are good plants and there are bad plants in the Kingdom of God, the church. The field is the world, the seed is the Word of God and the plants are people. We get that from the first parable in Matthew13. This is seen in the good seed and the bad, and the good fish and the useless stuff in the net.

ILLUSTRATION:

I was the Associate Pastor at a church in Southern California. There was A man who came to the church and wanted to talk to me. He said he was in counseling with someone and wanted me to call him. So I called the counselor. He had been arrested for molesting children. I said, “Well, maybe you can help me with some guidelines because I do not want to kick him out of church also. He needs ministry and we need to bring him out of the bondage he is in.” The counselor said that she cannot really advice about him because of the lawsuit, but can give hypothetical answers to the hypothetical questions that I ask.

So I asked, “If I had a man who was into molesting children, can I use him in the children’s ministry?”

She said, “No, I would not recommend.”

I said, “Would you recommend some guidelines – would you recommend that I do not let him ever be alone with a child?”

She said, “Yes, I think so. Make sure he is never alone with a child in the church, if you have such a person in the church.”

So I began going through the guidelines and I talked to this young man. I said, “I am very happy for you to be here in the church. But since you have this problem, you need to follow these guidelines if you are to be in the church.”

The next week I found him alone with a 9 year old, although doing something innocent. So I warned him that he may have to leave if he did not follow the guidelines. I ended up asking the man to leave eventually because he did not follow the guidelines.

So in the church, we will have people who are fruit bearing and also non-fruit bearing Christians. But you will not know who they are until they grow up to maturity. So many times I look at plants and I cannot figure out what kind of plants they are. But as you wait for it to grow up, you can then find out what kind of plant it is.

It is not our job to pull out the weeds. Who knows, maybe a weed by the miracle of God’s work can become a wheat and begin to bear fruit. We do not really know. What we should do is whether WE are wheat or weed and not sit to evaluate if the other person is a wheat or a weed.