Well, good afternoon. We will be doing the final session on Matthew today for now. Hopefully, in a few years, we'll be picking back up. But this is coming from the Historic Faith Commentary Series. We'll be doing chapter 13. It goes through chapter 13. And this is outside of the Sermon on the Mount. For me personally, I think this is the next most important chapter in Matthew after Matthew 5, 6, and 7, the Sermon on the Mount. Now, that's just a personal evaluation.
Of course, they all have very important truths in them. But Matthew 13 has the kingdom parables that explain a lot about the kingdom. So, we will be looking at some of those parables today. We won't have time to look at all of them, and I refer you to the commentary for explanation on the rest. Some of them are fairly self-explanatory, like the mustard seed. We're not going to go into it today.
I think we can all fairly easily see what that's talking about, that the Kingdom of God would start off tiny and become this big thing. But I want to start with the parable of the sower. And there's some important truths in here. At first glance, and really to the early Christians, it was a fairly obvious thing. But then because of false teaching that came in with Augustine and later on in church history, it now takes on a new dimension.
I think it would help us get back to the original truth of Christianity, to the original gospel. So I'll start with verses 3 through 8. It says, " And he spoke many things to them in parables saying, " Look, a sower went out to sow, and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside, and the birds came and ate them up. Some fell upon rocky places, where there was not much soil. And immediately they sprang up because they had no depth of soil. So when the sun came up, they were scorched.
And because they had no root, they withered away. And some seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them, but other seed fell onto good soil and bore fruit, some 100 fold, some 60-fold, some 30 fold. So I think all of us know the explanation Jesus gives that He's talking here about the gospel message being preached and the different responses by different people. And he gives us four types of soil that represent four different kinds of people.
He says the first one, and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside and the birds came and ate them up. Now, a wayside is like a pathway. So every field back then would have had a wayside at least along one of the edges so somebody walking along wouldn't have to walk through the middle of the field. Some fields would have had a wayside also in the middle of the field, just a dirt path that you could walk on. Well, because people are walking on it, it's going to be hard.
A seed falling there would have a hard time sending out any root down and take root. Not only that, because it was there on a hard surface, it would be very visible to the birds. The birds would just come and get the seeds and they'd never grow. So he's saying this is somebody who hears the gospel but really never believes. And that would be most people who hear the gospel, not only in his day or in the days of the apostles, but certainly today. They hear it. It never takes root. They never believe.
And Satan easily can snatch the seed away before it will take root in their heart. Okay, then he says, " Some seed fell upon rocky places where there was not much soil. " Now, most of our translations today say some seed fell upon rocky soil or the rocky soil. And I think all the Bibles I've ever used, that's what it said. And so I always thought this was talking about soil, like where I live. I live on the side of a mountain, and it's very rocky, and it would not make good farming. I mean, things grow.
I mean, we have a lawn, we have plenty of weeds, we have a lot of trees, things can grow there, but it wouldn't be good farmland because it's so rocky. But that's not what he's talking about. And the Greek there doesn't say rocky soil. The word soil is something the translator has tried to interpret Jesus ' words and just stuck that in there and it's given a little false impression. What the early Christians saw, how they're understanding it, is like a rocky ledge.
The Greek just says some of it fell among the Rocky, and it just stops there. They're understanding a rocky ledge. So they're picturing like, you know, on the side of a mountain or something like that. It could be anywhere where there's just a big outcropping of rock that would have some soil on it because, you know, when there's a dust storm, people, a wind blowing, you know, dirt, people kicking up dirt with a horse going by, something like that.
You know, there's a layer of dirt there on the rock, so a seed landing there could take root, but it couldn't go very deep. And it would be hard to get water since the rock, you know, it's going to hit the rock right away and it's not going to find a place where there's water. So that's what we should picture in our mind when we picture that. And Jesus explained that as somebody who believes initially, so they are saved. They believe, but then they don't endure.
And see, that whole part of the gospel has been thrown out in modern evangelical Christianity. It's once saved, always saved. So if you believe initially, if you truly believe, then that's it. Even if you drop out later on, then they might say, " Well, you never were a real Christian, " but they're not being consistent because you did really believe. But that's not enough. It's enough to initially get saved. But then you become a branch on the vine of Christ, and now you have to bear fruit, and you have to endure.
You have to keep bearing fruit the rest of your life. So Jesus said the problem is not that they didn't believe, not that they didn't get saved, but that they didn't endure. He says they believed for a while. So they were saved, they did believe, but they didn't endure. So that's the important lesson that was, you know, very clear to the early Christians, but goes against the modern gospel. Then some seed fell among the thorns and says the thorns sprang up and choked them. And this is the explanation Jesus gave.
He says, " The one who receives seed among the thorns is he who hears the Word, but the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the Word, and he becomes unfruitful. " So, this person believes, but the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches. If you want to get rich in this world, Jesus said, " You cannot serve God and serve mammon both. " I mean, the two are going to come in conflict. You can go for a while.
You're saved, you believed, but now all of these other cares and interests come up, and they compete against Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ will not let us serve two masters. I mean, if we're going to be serving him, we have to be whole sold. He's got to have our heart, mind, soul, everything if we're going to serve him. We can't have two masters. So when this happens, when we get caught up in the cares of this world, it can choke out the gospel that has been planted in us, and we end up losing our salvation.
And then the good soil, he says, " This is someone who hears the word with a noble and good heart. " And they produce fruit. You said 100 fold, 60-fold, 30-fold. So, if you can picture a grain of wheat in the ground, the stalk comes up and having, let's say, a hundred little grains on the seed stalk. That's what he's talking about when he says 100 fold, 30 fold, 60-fold, that sort of thing. So, we produce fruit. It doesn't mean we go out and make a hundred disciples.
I mean, that might be one kind of fruit, but that we have a life where the fruit of the Spirit is in abundance in our life. And some people will have more, they'll produce more fruit, and some people less. But if we're not producing any fruit, we're going to be cut off of the vine. Now, who is to blame for the good soil and the bad soil? Well, the early Christians, they're unanimous. We are to blame. If it's poor soil, that's our own fault.
If our heart is hardened because we have been so involved in sin that when we hear the gospel, we just laugh at it and reject it, God didn't harden our heart. God didn't predestine us to be someone who would reject it. That's our own fault for being hard-hearted. If we don't endure, we're at fault. If we let cares of this world choke out the gospel, we're the ones at fault. And if we only produce a little fruit, again, we're at fault. Not that we do everything on our own.
I mean, Christ is there giving us the power. He gives us everything we need, the tools, the power to attach ourselves to so that we can walk the Christian life, so we can endure, so we can reject the world, so we can produce fruit. We're not doing this all on our own strength. But we are the ones who decide we're going to submit ourselves to Christ's power. It doesn't come without a price. It doesn't come without consequences. If we're going to surrender to Christ, we have to give up the pleasures of this world.
We have to give up seeking money and things like that. And so if we're not willing to pay that cost, yeah, then all of these other things are going to happen to us in our life. But the good news is that we're not stuck in that. If we're poor soil, well, in the real world, poor soil doesn't have to be that way. I live, like I said, where there's rocky soil. But if we wanted to have a garden, well, we could work the soil, get the rocks out, bring in manure and bring in some good topsoil and mix it in there.
And yeah, we would be able to have a garden here if it was important enough to us to put the work and money into it. So, thorny, if you're in a place where there's a lot of thorns, you know, the thorns can be uprooted. Farmers deal with all of these kinds of soil and they make them work. So we as people, yeah, we can change. We can work on our heart. Again, Christ will give us the necessary power, but He won't do it all for us. We have to surrender to Him. It's synergism, us cooperating with God's grace.
Now, Jesus gave an explanation of why He taught in parables. And I'm going to just mention this briefly because it has an important truth in it for our own well-being that I want to bring out to you that by now you've heard it a jillion times from me, so I don't think this is going to be new. But this is a quotation when people I think it was his disciples. It was. It was his disciples who asked him, " Why do you teach in parables? " And he gave part of an explanation, I'm just reading part of it.
He said, " For this people's heart has become hard, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have closed their eyes lest at any time they should see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and be converted, and I would heal them. " Now, when I just read to you, as it's quoted there in Matthew, well, it's very clear who is the cause of the hard-heartedness? Who's the cause of it? Well, it's the people. It says their heart has become hard. Their ears are hard of hearing.
They have closed their eyes. It's not God making them do this. This is the people themselves. And he taught in parables. So to hide the truth for those who weren't sincere, if they wanted to come and hear an interesting story about somebody sowing seeds on four different kinds of soil, yeah, a bunch of people would have gone home and said, " That was interesting. I don't know what the application was, but kind of an interesting story. " You know, and same with these other ones.
But his disciples, they hung around and say, " Would you explain that to us? What did this mean? " And so he used it as a test. But what I wanted to point out is the explanation given there, Jesus is quoting Isaiah from the Septuagint. This is Jesus himself, who's quoting from the Septuagint. So it's very interesting.
When you read that same prophecy in the Masoretic text, it makes it sound like it's God who is causing them to be their heart to be hard and blinding their eyes, where the Septuagint makes it clear they're doing it themselves. And I think that's why Jesus quoted the prophecy the way that He did. So, that was why I wanted to point that verse out, that it's important to always use the Septuagint. I hope you use it for your Old Testament.
I mean, I use the Orthodox Study Bible, which I don't use the study notes very much. I'll occasionally look at them. I mean, most of the time I look at them, they're not bad. I don't like the icons in there. I've cut them out of my personal copy, but it's just nice to have a very readable translation of the Septuagint, together with the New Testament, all in one Bible. And that's what I use pretty much exclusively, unless I'm doing research.
And then I'll go grab a new King James or something to see what the Masoretic text says. But like I say, most of Jesus ' quotes are out of the Septuagint. He may have been teaching in Greek in some of the places. He no doubt, I mean, if his apostles knew Greek, Jesus certainly would have himself. There were a lot of Greek-speaking people in Galilee where Jesus carried on most of his ministry.
The synagogues there, I mean, all kinds of inscriptions in Greek on the different places of the synagogue, indicating that the synagogue goes for Greek-speaking Jews, and there would have been, of course, Gentiles who would have been Greek speaking as well. So, Jesus may have been directly quoting the Septuagint, or he may have been speaking in Aramaic, but quoting it as it read in the Septuagint. Okay, another parable, the wheat and the weeds. And I'll read you the parable.
He presented another parable to them saying, " The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went his way. When the plant sprung up and brought forth grain, the weeds also appeared. So the servants of the owner came and said to him, " Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where then have the weeds come from? " He said to them, " An enemy has done this.
" The servant said to him, " Do you want us to go and gather them up? " But he said, " No, lest while you gather up the weeds, you also uproot the wheat with them. Let them both grow together until the harvest. At harvest time, I will say to the reapers, " First gather together the weeds and tie them in bundles to burn, but gather the wheat into my barn. " Now, I think the meaning there is fairly clear. There was no big issue to the early Christians.
But the reason I'm bringing it up is because we Anabaptists have come up with a little different teaching on this parable than the way the early Christians understood it. And it's because we've been overreacting to the application that Augustine gave and that thereafter the Catholic Church gave to this parable. I mean, looking at it, I think most of us would understand, okay, Jesus is saying that He planted good seed, and then Satan came in and planted wicked people among the righteous.
And he said, " Let them grow up together. " And at the end, he would pull, he said he would take out the righteous from among the wicked in his kingdom so that we're not going to have a perfect church. In other words, there are going to be wicked people within the church. There's going to be hypocrites. We shouldn't let that upset this, upset us and cause us to stumble, which it does. A lot of people stumble like, " Oh, yeah, the hypocrite. " And they call themselves a Christian.
Well, wait a minute, Jesus said this was going to happen. It should actually make our faith stronger that Jesus said He would be like this. So, wow, this part of the parable has been fulfilled. So the last part of his returning and taking the weeds out at the end of the age, it's going to be coming true as well. But Augustine, what he taught when he first began teaching predestination, he didn't initially teach predestination. It was towards the end of his life that he came up with that false teaching.
And so then with this parable, he said, regardless of whether somebody is of the elect or not, that now he was dealing at an age where Christianity was the state religion of the Roman Empire. And he said that everyone should be required to come into the church. In other words, use the army, use the power of the state to make everybody attend church, even though they're not of the elect.
Mix them all in together, put everybody in the church, and at the end, God's going to pull out the predestined ones, but just mix them all in there together. And so that's the kind of church you had through the centuries in the state church. It was a mixture of wheat and weeds. People who should have been put who should have never been in the church in the first place because they didn't really believe, so they shouldn't have been baptized, they weren't converted, but they were baptized as infants.
So, yeah, they're all in the church. And Augustine taught if you weren't baptized as an infant, then you were eternally damned. So that was the only way to be saved is to be baptized as an infant. So, yeah, after Augustine, then it became state law. All the infants had to be baptized. And yeah, so you have a church that through man's because of man's false teaching was wheat and weeds mixed together. And the Anabaptists rightly reacted against that. No, this isn't what the church is supposed to be.
It's supposed to be a called out people who are separated to God, people who have been baptized only after they believe and have been converted and are committed to dying to sin and living afterwards a pure life. And so therefore, you should have a church that is disciplined and that is a pure church. And yeah, they were 100% correct. But where they erred then was in taking this parable, they said, " Oh, all Jesus is saying is that because he said the field is the world.
" So they said, " Well, he's just saying that Christians are planted in among the world, and we live here with the world. " But see, that doesn't fit the parable, because in the parable, what is planted first? It's the wheat, isn't it? The wheat is first planted, okay? Then Satan comes in and plants the weeds. But if the Anabaptist teaching is correct, well, then he would have to say, " First he planted these weeds, and then Jesus came along and planted wheat among the weeds. " And see, it's just the reverse.
So it doesn't fit. Now, what the Catholic Church was saying was wrong as well, but we shouldn't react to something by going to the other extreme. The truth is, we will never have a perfect church. We should endeavor to have a clean church, to have a church that is chaste. I mean, the bride that Christ will bring to Himself, but it's only going to be after He removes the weeds, is going to be a chaste pure bride.
But to get that chaste pure bride, it's going to be at the end when he pulls out all of the weeds from among the wheat. Now, again, the misapplication is, okay, so don't discipline people. Just let the wheat and weeds grow together. No, because Jesus gave us clear instructions on discipline in Matthew 18, and then we have more in the New Testament from the apostles. So we are to put wicked people out of the church. But you can't read everyone's heart.
Sometimes there's hidden sin going on that people don't even know about until much, much later, or sometimes we'll never know about. Sometimes it's when they die that then the truth comes out. And those people weren't put out of the church because no one knew. But they were weeds. God knew they were weeds, but they were there in the church.
The other thing that we cannot do that, of course, Augustine tried to do was to persecute people, to put everyone in one church, use the armies of the king to make everybody attend the one state church. Well, we can't do that anymore, thankfully, and we cannot physically do it, but we can't spiritually. It's wrong to ever do that spiritually. So, let's say we have a disciplined church and somebody is guilty of ungodly behavior, they're not repentant, we can put them out of the church is what we should do.
But we cannot stop them from going over across the street to the church, you know, across the street and becoming a member there. We can't stop them from calling themselves a Christian. We can't help that. So what we have today is just what Jesus predicted, a church, a visible church, that is, that is wheat and weeds mixed together. Even in a church like the Anabaptists where we try to exercise church discipline and all of that, there's plenty of hypocrites among us.
We don't have a church that everybody who calls himself an Anabaptist is going to be in heaven. I mean, no Anabaptist imagines that. So even when you have a disciplined church, you're going to have weeds there. We should do our best, but we should accept the fact we're not ever going to have a perfect church. And again, we're not the only Christians. Yeah, there's other true Christians mixed up in all of these other churches along with the weeds. So it is what Jesus said.
We should take, you know, joy in that, that, wow, it happened just like Jesus foretold it would, so I can believe what Jesus says. Okay, Matthew 13:44. These are some of the smaller ones. We will end on some of these. Jesus said, " Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and then hid again. In his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. " Okay, so to understand just what Jesus is describing, this person finds a treasure in somebody else's land.
Now, you know, if there's buried treasure on my land, you know, my neighbor who may hear about it, you know, find some old maps or something, he can't come and dig on my land and take the treasure. If he wanted to get it, he'd have to come over to Dave, can I buy your land? And well, I'm not interested in selling. Well look, I'll pay you double what it's market value. Okay, I might sell. So Jesus isn't saying this is ethical or anything like that. He's using a parable to get a truth across.
Okay, so this man finds this treasure and the truth he wants to get across is that there is a great cost to embracing the gospel. It isn't easy. It means giving up it could mean giving up everything we have, including our life. It will cost us a lot in some way, even if we don't give up everything materially. And that's why this man goes out and sells everything he has to buy that field. He has to buy the field because he doesn't own it. Once he buys it, then he owns the treasure.
So he's saying that if we want to become citizens of the kingdom, we have to be willing to give up everything. And the attachment in our heart, we do have to give up the attachment to everything that we have in order to be His disciple. So that is the truth that he's getting across. Now, what is this? Why is it a treasure hidden in a field? Now, that part I never understood. I got the sense of the parable. I think, you know, most of us would.
The early Christians understood this to be the Scriptures, particularly the Old Testament, that, well, when Jesus would have given this, the only scriptures they had were the Old Testament. And all the prophecies about the Messiah, about the kingdom, about the gospel going out to the Gentiles. All of this was there in the Old Testament, but it was hidden. People read the prophecies, but they didn't understand them.
I mean, there was not a single person who recognized Jesus as the Messiah because they saw the prophecies and realized they were fulfilled. In fact, it wasn't until after he died that the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus comes alongside of him, and He has to open their eyes to all these prophecies in the Old Testament. So these were His disciples, we don't know which disciples, but they were His disciples, but they didn't even recognize these. These were hidden in the Old Testament.
So that's why he's described as a treasure hidden in the field. And of course, now he's made us aware of the treasure that is there. And we've already talked about why he has to sell all the possessions. Okay, I think this is the final parable that he gives, the parable of the dragnet. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea. Now, I never knew exactly what a dragnet was. I mean, I had a pretty good idea. It's a net and you drag it, it catches a lot of fish.
But I did a little historical research in working on the commentary. And a dragnet, it's called a seine often today. Often there are a hundred yards, I believe it's yards wide. I'm looking here at my note, see if I have it here in front of me. Yeah, 100 yards long, okay? So if you can picture the size of an American football field where they play American football, I say American because I know some of you live in Europe or Canada and you've maybe never seen one of our fields.
It may be about the same size as a European soccer field. I'm not sure, but I think it's somewhere along that size. So you're talking about a net that big, and it's going to be like 10 feet high, and it's got weights on the bottom, so it'll sink down underneath the water, but then floats on the top, so it'll float on top of the water, so the whole thing won't sink.
Okay, so when you set it up and stretch it out with different fishermen holding ropes to hold it tight, I mean, you've got a vertical wall there in the water, a huge one, like say a hundred yards long. And then these fishermen would start slowly pulling it towards the shore. And as they pull it in, they're pulling it together, and it's catching everything in its path. You know, the fish that you're wanting, but also lots of fish that you don't want, you know, unclean fish to the Jewish people.
Today, just fish that no one would care to eat. And you pull it all on the shore. Well, then when they got on the shore, and of course he's speaking to Jews there, they would have sat down on the sand, and then all the fish that were either unsuitable to anyone to eat, or at least were unclean to the Jews to eat, yeah, they would have to toss out, you know, or maybe too small or whatever. And they would keep the clean ones.
So, the meaning of this parable, you know, I tell my Anabaptist friends that, " Okay, even if you don't want to accept what Jesus said in the parable of the wheat and the weeds, there's no way to get around this. " I mean, he says, " So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth and remove the wicked from among the righteous and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. " So he's saying that the wicked are part of the kingdom.
I mean, he said the kingdom of God is like a dragnet. He didn't say that the world is like a dragnet or the earth. He said the kingdom of God is like a dragnet that is pulling in all of these kinds of people. So the dragnet would represent the preaching of the gospel. When we go out, we're fishers of men, and we're pulling in all kinds of people, and it brings in clean and unclean fish. Now, part of the reason why this has happened, but it was there from day one.
The unclean fish would have been largely the heretics in the first few centuries that would have heard the right gospel. But yeah, they decided to listen to a different gospel instead, or to become a teacher of a different gospel. And then you had people who would fall into sin and wickedness and not repent. So it was bringing in even then unclean fish. Well, today, I mean, the gospel, there's who knows how many different versions of the gospel, hundreds of them saying all kinds of things.
You know, if you invite Jesus in your heart and say this prayer, you're forever saved and all of that. So, when you talk about people who call themselves Christians, who identify themselves as part of the church, and to our eyes, they're part of the visible church, yeah, you have a lot of unclean fish among the clean fish. And even as I said, in a disciplined church, you've got people there who are hypocrites. You have people who might follow all of the external regulations, but they don't love their fellow man.
And, you know, I've never heard of someone being put out of a church because we discerned you don't have a lot of love. I mean, you know, people might not ever ordain you because they feel like you're not loving or all that. But I've never heard of someone being put out of a church for it. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't. I'm just saying I've never heard of it done. Or there's all kinds of sins, you know, that people commit that will keep them out of the kingdom of heaven.
Certainly if we're not loving or we're not forgiving, I think it's going to keep us out of the kingdom of heaven, but we're not usually put out of the church for that. So even in a disciplined church, you have unclean fish there. But again, I think the message to us, don't let it stumble us. When something like Ravi Zacharias, a lot of people got stumbled over that. And of course, now, I mean, it didn't particularly bother me.
I mean, the kind of church he went to and all of that, I don't put a lot of stock there, although I'm not saying there aren't true Christians there. I appreciated during his lifetime, I felt he was carrying on a worthwhile ministry. I wasn't expecting the news that came out once he died. But it didn't like I say, I'm not shocked at what goes on in the more conventional, worldly churches. But even in our churches, like I say, people that we really look up to often will fail us.
And, you know, I think the message here from this parable is, " Don't let it cause us to stumble. " Jesus had said, " Look, I know you want. You would like a church that would be all clean fish. You would like to be in a dragnet that only got just the perfect ones and all of that. " And he's telling us, " I'm sorry, my kingdom isn't going to work that way. There's going to be unclean fish among you.
" Yeah, if you recognize them and they've committed sins that are, you know, spelled out that we should put those kind of people out of the church, yeah, they should be put out of the church, but there's still going to be other people who remain that aren't going to be very good Christians, and we don't have grounds to put them out of the church, but they aren't necessarily ultimately going to be in heaven, that they are going to be picked out of the kingdom.
In the end, the bride is going to be a pure bride, but we're not going to have a pure bride on the earth that's visible to us. Now, of course, Jesus knows who is his own and who isn't. I mean, nothing is a surprise to him, but a lot of these things are hidden from our eyes. So we will end then Matthew 13 with that. Again, there are other great parables there, a lot of teaching about when he preached in Nazareth and his rejection in Nazareth that's there in the 13th chapter.
So I really encourage you to read the entire chapter, to look at all of those things. And again, the early Christians have shed a lot of light that I explain in the commentary that I haven't gone into today. Again, thank you for your attention.