ULDAH MINISTRY

No,63　　Jan. 2001

　【 THE PRESENT STATE OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 】

Then he (Jesus) told them many things in parables, …(The first parable)… The disciples came to him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?" He replied, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak to them in parables: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. … But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I told you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it. …(The second to the seventh parables)… "Have you understood all these things?" Jesus asked. "Yes," they replied. He said to them, "Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old."
Matthew 13:3, …:10~13, … :16~17, :51~52 Lines added

The Third Parable of 'the Mustard Seed'
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.

The Forth Parable of 'the Yeast'
The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.

Jesus told important teachings about the kingdom of heaven (or God) in parables. Matthew 13 records seven parables of the kingdom: The parables of 'The Sower', of 'The Weeds', of 'The Mustard Seed', of 'The Yeast', of 'The Hidden Treasure', of 'The Pearl' and of 'The Net'. After spending a considerable amount of time in teaching, preaching and also performing miracles, healings and deliverances in the town of Galilee, what overwhelmed Jesus were the hard-heartedness and faithlessness of the Jews. Their condition was exactly as Isaiah had prophesied, 'You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.' (Matt.13:14-15, quoted from Isiah6:9-10).
Jesus offered the Jews the entrance into the kingdom of heaven, which He revolutionarily inaugurated on the earth. The conditions of entrance was to repent and to turn to God's righteousness, i.e. salvation, rather than attempting to establish their own righteousness by outwardly and cunningly observing the law. However, Israel as a nation rejected Jesus. Instead, the unbelieving Israel demanded Jesus to show them a miraculous sign. Having grieved over their response, Jesus exclaimed, 'A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here.' (Matt.12:39-41)
Jonah was the Old Testament prophet who was commissioned to preach God's message of judgment to the Ninevites, the then most wicked Gentile nation. In the process, he experienced the ordeals of death, burial in the belly of a fish for three days and three nights, and resurrection. Above all, the most extraordinary miracle in Jonah's ministry was the fact that the whole city of Nineveh had listened to Jonah, repented wholeheartedly and turned from their evil ways to believing in God. Accordingly, what Jesus primarily meant by 'the sign of the prophet Jonah' would be a sign of preaching of repentance. Now Jesus, greater than Jonah and Solomon was there preaching the gospel to the Jews, so that they would repent, and so escape the condemnation at judgment by the Ninevites who had repented at the preaching of Jonah and also by the Queen of the Sheba, who had demonstrated her teachable heart by coming all the way from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom. Nevertheless, Israel rejected the gospel. According to Jesus' foresight, the consequence would inevitably be that 'the final condition of that man (who is vulnerably exposed to recurring degeneration because of rejection of Jesus and of His teaching) is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.' (Matt.12:45)
Disappointed by His own nation Israel, Jesus' teachings radically changed at this point to a message of a different aspect of the kingdom of heaven, where only those who both accept Him as their Saviour and remain in Him to the end can enter, addressed to those who have already believed. As Jonah became a preacher to the Gentiles, Jesus' interest was turned to whoever does the will of His Father in heaven and also whoever has ears to listen, beyond the original restriction to His own nation. This expansion is illustrated in the parable of 'the Wedding Banquet' in Matthew 22:1-14, in which believing Gentiles were added to be the wedding guests in the banquet, owing to the refusal of the originally invited guests, i.e. Israel. It was this transitional time that Jesus started preaching 'the message about the kingdom of heaven', not to the unbelieving but to the believing. This message might be identified with what the author of the Hebrews expressed, 'Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in god, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so.'(Hebrews 6:1-3).
However, what he taught in Matthew 13 is not the exciting 'Good news (Gospel)' as we know it at all. Rather, all the parables underline Jesus' prophetic views of the present on-going but not yet perfect kingdom of heaven on the earth until He comes back. To put it more precisely , he implicitly prophesied about the increasing wickedness within the flock of God's children, the Church, and also about a scarcity of those who bear good fruits and who remain in the Lord and His original teachings to the end. The Lord, probably addressing His followers, told these parables as warnings of falling away from Him and His teachings. Also, He might prophetically have felt the necessity of giving a correct view of the kingdom of heaven for His follower's guidance up to the end of the age and His Second Coming, when the consummation of the kingdom will finally come true on the earth. From the beginning, as the parables were told so that only those who sought after God's kingdom and His righteousness could acknowledge 'the secrets of the kingdom of heaven', so it is not easy to interpret them properly as Jesus would primarily have intended. Without the guidance of the Holy Spirit, it is utterly impossible to read out God's will, and we are bound to result in misinterpretation.
For example, there are very popular wide-spread interpretations for the third and forth parables, in that what has carelessly been emphasised is a rising growth and global expansion of Christianity. On the contrary, however, what Jesus consistently taught throughout the Scriptures were long-suffering, patience and meekness on this side of the kingdom until His coming. One of the reasons for such a false hope might lie in their ignorance of the teachings of the Hebrew Bible (which Christians call 'the Old Testament') and also ignorance of the original meaning of the Hebrew terms in it. Whereas the majority of the New Testament theologians spiritualised the 'secrets (mysteries) of the kingdom of heaven' as being not a visible kingdom but an invisible spiritual kingdom of God dwelling within the heart of believers, the Hebrew Bible explicitly teaches 'malikut schamayim', which means "the rule of the heavens over the kingdom of heaven". In other words, it teaches that there will be a visible, earthly kingdom, in which the Son of Man is to reign. The Hebrew prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel and Zechariah who had prophesied the Messiah's reign over the earth, longed to see with their own eyes the fulfillment of their prophecies but they had to die without seeing the results of their ministry because it was not God's time yet, as Jesus pointed out in His teaching (v.17, quoted at the beginning). Thus, if the teachings of the Hebrew Bible were to be thoroughly examined and interpreted using Hebraic methods and concepts, it would also help us to understand the New testament correctly.
Concerning the Hebraic usage of many terms in the New Testament, it is of significance to remember the fact that Jesus always implicitly or explicitly referred to phrases or accounts of the Hebrew Bible with which the Jews were very familiar to a degree that they had almost learnt it by heart, whenever He told the teachings and warnings to them. For example, concerning the parable of the Yeast, if we are well informed about how the terms such as 'yeast', 'woman' and 'to mix' are symbolically used in the Hebrew Bible, their interpretation as described above, being taught in churches these last days would probably not have come about. The same can be said about the terms 'tree' and 'bird' in the parable of the Mustard Seed. The popular teachings generally emphasise the intensive(as seen in the effect of the yeast) and extensive(as seen in the effect of the mustard seed) influence of the kingdom and also the enormous impact on the whole society when such a small amount of yeast-like gospel comes in contact with it. As the woman took and mixed the yeast into flour until it worked all through the dough, so the gospel, seemingly hidden in the world in the first stage, will spread explosively until it reaches all over the world. This is indeed a welcome teaching, which devoted Christian's itching ears would most want to hear. However, this interpretation inevitably conveys inconsistency in itself. The nature of the yeast that puffs up is an emblem of sinful pride, which Paul also used, 'Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast-as you really are.' (1Co.5:6-7). Also, the nature of the yeast that works by itself without human aid cannot be likened to the work of evangelism. Among many, the fact that the yeast is consistently used to denote 'evil' alone in the Hebrew Bible should not be ignored. If we realise the principle that if symbols and special meanings of terms are established when they first appear and that they are explained or alluded to somewhere else in the Bible, it is possible for us to reach the most appropriate interpretations without exercising our own sense and imagination.
Bearing the symbolic meaning of 'the yeast' in mind, the interpretation of the parable would be as follows: Apostate churches and teachings(yeast), which were subtly inaugurated in the 1st century, will continue to grow within the Christendom and they will become dominant to an extent that it will even outnumber the true church (flock of Christ). The seven parables and also Jesus' warnings to the seven churches in Revelation 2 & 3 seem to support this view. The fact that throughout the long church history, the church has constantly been exposed to false doctrines, paganism and idolatry so that she adopted countless pagan customs and unbiblical rituals into church services, appears to be the fulfilment of the view. This contaminated condition will last to the end because we are not wise enough to judge the difference between the fruits during the process of the growth of evil, according to the parable of 'the Weeds'. In it, even angels are not wise enough to be able to pull the weeds out without harming any wheat until the harvest, when Jesus Himself will come back as a king over the world. This is where we are at present, where the presence of evil within the church can be recognised but not be correctly identified. However, the thing we must not forget is that it is God who allowed and is still allowing the growth of apostasy for the present. Therefore, any effort to try to remove every false teaching and every false practice out of the church will prove futile. In the past, such human justification and exercise of rooting up what they thought were false 'weeds', only resulted in the ruin of much true 'wheat'. Errors of Reformers such as Luther and Calvin should not be repeated any more. Spending time on preaching the original teachings of Jesus should be encouraged more than time on criticising, condemning and pulling down others' ministry and teachings by denouncing them as paganism, consequently creating unnecessary discord and division within the church. As long as they do not deny Jesus' deity, according to both Jesus' own and John's teachings they are "for them" for the present.
Then, what did Jesus intend for those who want to be faithful to Him to the end?
The answer can be drawn from the closing word of the Lord spoken in the end of the series of the parables, 'Every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.' To put it another way, unless a teacher of the Word understands both Old and New testament teachings, he is not properly instructed in the truths of the kingdom of heaven. Concerning what is symbolised in the terms, 'new' and 'old', suffice it to say that this interpretation appears to be the best fit, although examination of the meanings of 'storeroom' and 'treasure' in the Hebrew Bible can lead to a quite different interpretation. Jesus wants His followers to be well versed in both Testaments so that they can fully understand the message about the kingdom and accordingly, appropriately prepare themselves for the kingdom of heaven now and in the future.

NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS

This month a money gift has been sent to IBS to distribute Bibles to the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. 50 NIV English Bibles, 26 Swahili Bibles, 250 Swahili New testaments and 50 Arabic/Swahili Parallel new testaments were swiftly given to the beneficiaries who have been hungry for the Word of God, as surprise gifts at this time of the year. Pray for FREDERIC 's effective out-reach to the refugees in Nairobi and in other places.
Yukiko has been led to On-Nuri Church in Osaka, Japan. Pray for her settlement there after her long wondering around churches. Also pray for the leadership of the Korean pastor, Samuel Kim and of other leaders in this young but spirit -filled living church, so that the Lord's ministry will continually be done through them.
Especially pray for those who need the Lord's strength, wisdom, insight, discernment and peace for their church's unity and sound function: Mr. and Mrs. SASAKI who are faithfully committing themselves to interceding for their church in Tochigi, Japan. JUNKO who is seeking the Lord's counsel for her Japanese church in London.
We remember all those in our prayers, who devote themselves to the Lord's work through church and their own ministries.

NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS-NEWS