Parables of Matthew (Part One)
Text: Matthew 13: 44 – 52
Wow! It’s been a crazy week! You ever have those times when you’ve got so much running through your head that it kind of just gets jumbled up and then your brain just kind of shuts down? Writers block is not good for a pastor. And it was messed up, because after the Easter Holiday I had intended to go right back to our study in the Book of Judges, but about Wednesday I felt like the Lord was leading me a different way… so I prayed and prayed… and… NOTHIN’!
So I figured, “Well maybe I’ll preach a few messages about what happened between the resurrection and Pentecost… Yeah! That’s it! I’ll title it ‘From Passover to Pentecost!’ It’ll be great!” So I started on that… got going, I even started the power point for it… and wouldn’t you know it… I felt the Lord leading me a different way.
So for most of Saturday I was wrestling in prayer… MJ said I was “grumpy” and “on edge” yesterday. And I probably was… it’s just that you know you’re trying to focus on hearing the Lord and you’ve got 20 other things trying to keep your focus as well. Finally I was able to get some quiet time, and then I spent most of last night working on this. I really don’t like to do sermons this way, because I like to spend several hours in study on the text, but I really believe this is what the Lord wants me to share with you this morning. And after you hear it, you can tell me if I missed it or not.
(READ TEXT)
I don’t know if any of you know who Penn Jillette is… he’s part of a two man act called Penn and Teller. They do illusions and magic tricks and comedy, and he’s an admitted atheist. I want to show you a video clip of something that happened to him a few years ago. (Or: I want to tell you about something that happened to him a few years ago after a show he had just done. A Christian approached him and gave him a Bible and shared the Gospel with him… and here’s what Penn Jillette said, “I’ve always said, you know, that I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. I don’t respect that at all. If you believe that there’s a heaven and a hell and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life or whatever and you think that, well, it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward, how much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? I mean, if I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming at you and you didn’t believe it and that truck was bearing down on you, there’s a certain point where I tackle you, and this is more important than that.”) Now here’s a guy, whose not a Christian, he doesn’t believe in Jesus… but he understands a simple truth. He understands that if you truly believe that people are going to go to hell without Christ, and you refuse to share Him with them… you must not love them.
Now the reason we’re doing this today is to be trained for the Kingdom… that’s what Jesus is talking about to His disciples in our text… He wants them… (Verse 52) to be trained for the kingdom. Now the crowds who had also heard these parables, they didn’t quite understand everything that Jesus was saying, they weren’t privy to these explanations that Jesus gave to His disciples… But the disciples not only heard the parables, they also got to talk to Jesus after words and get the full explanations for them… and so do we, because they’re written down in God’s Word. And Jesus explained it to them because He wanted them to not only get what He was saying, but to be changed by what He was saying.
Now I’ve shown that video to several Christians over the years and I get one of three responses.
The first response is: “Wow! He’s right! I’m glad I share the gospel with people!”
The second response is: “Wow! He’s right, I need to share the gospel more.” And the third response is when a person goes on the defensive: “Well I’m not called to evangelism. I don’t have that gift.” And when someone says that to me I’ll usually ask them “What Bible are you reading?” But the fact is… most of the time; that’s the answer I get. And the fact is that often times we fail to live like the disciples we are called to be. We get scared. We back off, we don’t speak when we should speak, we run when we should be advancing. And so we need instruction. That’s the point of our text, and that’s going to be the point of the sermons you hear for the next few weeks.
So let’s look at verses 51 – 52 again (READ).
The 1st thing Jesus asks His disciples is: “Do you understand all of this?” Up to this point Jesus had given 7 parables in Matthew 13. He’s talked to them about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like, how it grows, how it advances, what its worth and its value. He’s talked to them about the inner aspects that shape its progress in the world, and what the consequences are for belonging to it and what the consequences are for rejecting it. And while He was giving the parables – for the most part the disciples were scratching their heads… you know… just going “Huh? What’s He talkin’ about?” You know… I actually see this all the time. You’ll be trying to explain something to someone and they just sort of check out. I blame cell phones, ipads, the internet, social media, and TV… and let me just tell you; it’s difficult, if not impossible; to explain a deep theological idea in a tweet of 140 characters or less. Jesus spent more than 3 years with His disciples – day in and day out, all day long, teaching them, mentoring them discipling them, and they still didn’t get it, and yet somehow we’ve gotten it in our heads that if we don’t get some mind blowing, life altering, world shaking revelation from God in 20 minutes, one day a week, we’re checking out. Sometimes it takes more than that to get understanding.
You see; Jesus wasn’t asking them if what He said was clear. He was asking them if His teachings had sunk down deep inside them so that they can bear fruit. We know that based on what He’s already taught up in verse 19 when He says, “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart.” His concern is that His teaching… the “Seed” if you will; has taken root and if they’re going to produce lasting fruit.
Understanding is more than just knowing the facts…
The Bible tells us that even the demons believe… and they tremble. The Biblical idea of understanding goes beyond just having a head full of knowledge… IT IS KNOWLEDGE, but it’s also the correct application of that knowledge. It’s like telling a child don’t touch the stove, it’s hot and it will burn you. They’ve been told – they have that fact in their head, but what do they do? Make a B-line toward the stove.
The lost are perishing. The Gospel is God’s ordained means of bringing salvation to them. Yes I know that… Well????
The wages of sin is death… it will kill you if you continue practicing it. Yes I know that… Well??
Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together, especially as you see that day approaching. The gathering of the Church is God’s way to equip you for the work of ministry. It’s God’s way of empowering you through the hearing of His Word. It’s God’s way of encouraging you in times of trouble through the mutual encouragement of your brothers and sisters in Christ. Yes I know that… Well???
James 2 – “Show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ… if you show partiality you are committing sin and convicted by the Law as transgressors.” In other words, don’t play favorites in the Church; we’re all one in Christ…. Yes I know that… Well???
Jesus doesn’t want us to just have heads full of facts, but lives that don’t match. He wants us to not only know these Biblical principles, but understand them.
Turn with me to Romans 12:1 – 2 (READ). Do you see there how the presenting of our bodies as a living sacrifice is tied directly to the renewing of our minds?
When Paul wrote that he was basically saying, “Listen… the world wants to put you in its mold. It wants to conform you to itself.” That’s what being ‘conformed’ means… it means to be shaped by something as if in a mold. And Paul was saying, “Don’t do that! Don’t let that happen to you. Instead be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
Church please understand that the Biblical idea of a disciple is someone whose entire world view and life is shaped, and influenced, and focused on Jesus Christ. Peter, and James, and Paul, and John… they wouldn’t be able to comprehend the modern Christian who puts their faith on a shelf during the week and only picks it up on Sunday.
Again… this is a principle the world gets.
I want to read a quote to you… I think I’ve read it to you before, but it’s worth repeating. It’s from a man named C.F. Potter. Potter said, “Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday Schools, meeting for an hour once a week, teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?” Now this guy Potter co-authored the Humanist Manifesto… He co-authored it with a guy named John Dewey (the so called ‘Father of Modern Education’). Those guys wrote the Humanist Manifesto in 1933… and what’s interesting is that they knew it would be awhile before they started seeing results… in-fact they predicted it would be about 30 years… 30 years later the hippie counter culture came on the scene, 30 years after that, one of them was President of the United States, and another one is now… Take that how you will, but history bears it out.
That’s why Jesus wanted to make sure these guys understood what He was saying. He wants to make sure that they weren’t just going through the motions, but that the seed of His Word and teachings was really getting down deep inside them and taking root. He wants them to be trained for the Kingdom of Heaven, so that they can be like a master of the house, bringing out treasure, both new and old…
Now you’re going to have to wait til next week before we get to what that means, and I hope you’ll be here. I don’t have time to get into it today…
So instead I’ll close with this… none of this matters if you don’t know Jesus Christ. That’s the first thing we have to understand… and that’s the Gospel… that we’re all sinners, we need a Savior, and God has provided us a Savior in His only begotten Son.
Closing and Prayer
