Sermon Tone Analysis

*The Kingdom and the World*

*Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43*

We come now to the thirteenth chapter of Matthew.

I trust that you have your Bible ready and your mind is open, your heart available to the Lord because we have some marvelous, marvelous things that God will show us as we look at the second parable in Matthew 13.

And it is a parable about judgment, a parable about judgment.

To set our thinking in motion, we need to be reminded that the Lord is the King of the earth.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the ruler over this earth.

As the Old Testament tells us that God is King of the universe, that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.

That the Most High rules in the kingdom of men.

So, we affirm that Jesus Christ is the King of this earth.

Within that kingdom, the Lord Jesus obviously allows Satan a certain amount of freedom.

He allows sinners a certain amount of freedom.

And yet over it all He is still the King.

He is still ruling.

Every phase of human history, then, marks some facet of the rulership of Jesus Christ.

The rulership of God in the world.

There is no period of time when the kingdom of God is not in effect on the earth.

God mediates His rule on the earth through men.

Initially God mediated His rule on earth through Adam.

Adam was His agent.

Adam was His vice-regent, if you will.

And then there were the patriarchs, through God...through whom God mediated His rule.

And then the monarchs, and then the priests and the prophets and then the incarnate Lord Jesus Christ.

And then in a very real sense, God mediated His will and His rule through the Apostles who overlapping with Jesus Christ in the early church, were the very source by which God brought revelation to man about His kingdom.

There's coming a future time when God will again bring His rule to earth as mediated through the living exalted glorified incarnate Lord Jesus Christ and that we know as the millennial kingdom.

And then, finally, the earth and the heaven will be merged in the eternal kingdom when the universal kingdom and the mediated kingdom on earth become one and the same.

The Bible delineates very clearly all of these elements of God's rule in the earth and there's one more that we left out in our little recounting there and that is the period of time from the rejection of Christ to the return of Christ, the age in which we live.

That, too, is ruled by Jesus Christ.

This, too, is a form of His kingdom.

The Bible designates it in the New Testament as the mystery form, that which was not seen in the Old Testament.

That which was not revealed in the Old Testament.

That period of time not really delineated, but now through the New Testament teaching of our Lord and particularly the expanded teaching of the Apostle Paul, clearly defined for us.

We are living in that era.

Jesus in Matthew 13 tells us what it will be like.

He defines for us in seven parables, the character, the extent, the value and the consummation of this period known as the mystery form of the kingdom.

God is mediating His rule on the earth through His church, indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

Now, the disciples didn't see this period of time as the prophets of old didn't see it either.

So, when the Messiah arrived, they thought immediately He would establish His kingdom.

And when He established His kingdom, immediately all the rebels and unbelievers would be destroyed and holiness would fill the earth and righteousness would fill the earth and the kingdom would be as it was predicted to be by the prophets of old.

And so they were always concerned about the kingdom and its character and its power and its consummation.

Even after Jesus died on the cross, they were still curious about* *the kingdom.

That's all He ever really talked to them about, really.

Before His death it was the kingdom, and after His resurrection, it was more about the kingdom.

And it led them to ask Him in the first chapter of Acts and verse 6, "Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore the kingdom?"

Is this the time?

To which He replied, 'It's not for you to know the times, or the seasons which the Father has put into His own power."

That's not your business.

They were always concerned about the kingdom.

He said - It's not for you to know, but the angel said - This same Jesus who's taken up from you shall so come in like manner as you've seen Him go.

The kingdom will come, they said, but it won't tome until He comes back... in its fullness.

The kingdom you're looking for, the kingdom of glory and righteousness and absolute holiness, the kingdom where the Lord Jesus rules with a rod of iron and tolerates no evil, that kingdom that is that fully anticipated by the prophets, awaits His return.

But in the meantime, in the meantime, there is a form of the kingdom and that form is described as the mystery.

Now, this is very hard for the disciples, I think, to understand.

Because they didn't see this.

They only saw the full and glorious consummation.

Now remember last time, Jesus begins to tell them parables here in Matthew 13 to help them to understand the nature of this intervening period in which we live.

It isn't ended yet because Christ hasn't come yet.

And He begins to describe it to them and the first thing He says is a parable of soils.

And He told them there were four kinds of soils: the hard, resistant soil, the seed never even penetrated.

And then there was the rocky ground soil where the seed went down a little ways, sprung up for awhile and then died because there was no depth.

Then there was the thorny or weedy soil where the seed went down, began to* *grow but was choked out by the weeds and thorns that occupied that soil.

And then fourthly, and finally, there was the good soil where there was real fruit.

And Jesus is saying an amazing thing.

He is saying - In this form of the kingdom, not everybody believes, not everybody's genuine, not everybody is bearing the fruit of righteousness.

Now, I can only help you to understand and probably not fully understand what a devastating truth this would be to the disciples.

They saw no such form of the kingdom, no such mingled kingdom, no such kingdom with good and bad tolerated.

They didn't see that.

They saw a kingdom of righteousness, a kingdom of holy glory where unbelievers were devastatingly judged, punished, put out, destroyed.

They saw what Barclay calls, "a new and stainless humanity being brought to existence in the kingdom.

And the enemies being destroyed."

So, having heard the first parable, they probably would have thought to themselves - Well, there's going to be then three kinds of rejecters and one kind of true and genuine fruit-bearing soil, what's going to happen to the rejecters?

And I can think it in my own mind, they must have been saying in those blasphemous Pharisees in chapter 12 who accused Jesus of being of Satan, what are You going to do to them?

What's going to happen to the rejecters?

Are they going to get it?

Are they going to get blasted away?

And, they had good reason to think that because they had been listening, no doubt, to the instruction that came from the mouth of John the Baptist who said - When He comes, He will baptize you with fire.

And fire being symbolic of judgment.

His fan is in His hand, He will purge the floor.

He'll gather the wheat to the grainery and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.

And here's John the Baptist, the immediate forerunner of Jesus Christ and he doesn't even see this interim period.

Here is the immediate forerunner saying - When He gets here it is going to be fire and burning up of all the chaff and only the wheat will be kept.

So, it's very obvious that they would have thought this.

And all of this, too, was based upon the Old Testament prophets.

Listen to just a selected portion from the prophets and it's going to come by quickly, so just jot the Scripture down if you want to keep them.

Isaiah chapter 2, and as Isaiah looked at the kingdom, it says, "It shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills and all nations shall flow into it.

And many people should go and say, Come ye and let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob and He will teach us His ways and we will walk in His paths."

And then verse 4, "He will judge among the nations, He will rebuke the peoples."

So, they see the law of God and the word of God and the righteousness of God in the words of Isaiah, dominating the earth.

Everybody accepting the law of God and judgment and rebuke to those who reject.

In the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, and the third verse, when the Messiah comes and the kingdom comes, it says, "He shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord.

He shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, not superficially, nor after the hearing of his ears, but with righteousness shall He judge the poor.

He will reprove with equity for the meek of the earth.

He will smite the earth with a rod of His mouth and with the breath of His lips will He slaw the wicked and righteousness shall be the girdle of His loins."

In other words, righteousness and the slaying and the destroying and the devastation of the wicked.

Now, if you come to Jeremiah 31, you find in the words of Jeremiah the same kind of prophecies.

In chapter 31, verse 33, "When the Lord comes to build His kingdom with Israel He will make a covenant."

He says, "I'll put My law in their inward parts.

I'll write it in their hearts.

I'll be their God and they'll be My people.

And they'll teach no more every man his neighbor and every man his brother saying know the Lord for they'll all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord.