ULDAH MINISTRY

No,90　　APRIL. 2003

【 THE PRESENT KINGDOM OF GOD 】

The Parable of The Growing Seed
He also said, A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces corn - first the stalk, then the ear, then the full grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come."
Mark 4:26~29

The Parable of The Weeds
Jesus told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed ears, then the weeds also appeared. "the owner's servants came to him and said, 'Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?' "'An enemy did this,' he replied. "The servants asked him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?' "'No,' he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.'"
Matthew 13:24~30

Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, "Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field." He answered, " The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of man. The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. "As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the father. He who has ears, let him hear.
Matthew 13:36~43

The author of the Gospel of Mark records Jesus' parable of "The Growing Seed", which is not seen in the Gospel of Matthew or Luke. This seemingly unimpressive parable, however, suddenly takes on a significant message about how Jesus' followers should live in the kingdom of God here and now, if it is appropriately interpreted. In fact, our understanding of parables increases when we have the background knowledge of how grains and fruits grow in a dry hot land like Palestine. In addition, a similar parable in Matthew, "The Wheat And The Weeds" would play a role of supplementing Mark's parable, by providing an answer to Jesus' followers' doubts and questions about their master, Jesus' frustrating inactivity and at the same time their own powerlessness in the world. They were undoubtedly also among those who had expected Jesus to take a revolutionary action to restore the independent state of the Jew as a Jewish king but they had been disappointed by His inactivity. The straight point of the parable of "The Growing Seed" is that as a seed has within it miraculous power to regenerate a new life, so the gospel of Jesus contains a life-giving power to a spiritually dead person and it will sustain him so as to be successfully harvested in the end. All the process of growth to harvest will be achieved by God's initiative. Successful harvest at the end cannot be attributed to man's work but to God alone. In the disciples' eyes, Jesus' ministry had proved much less impressive with slow expansion and politically far more inactive than they had expected, and they would have felt very frustrated by their master's inactivity. This parable of Jesus was therefore well-timed and served such questions.
Jesus illustrates three stages of the farmer's work; (1) Sowing of seed, (2) Doing nothing and simply waiting for harvest and (3) bringing in of his crop. Careful look into His illustration reveals the point that it is the farmer that is active to take a role in the scenes 1 and 3 but it is the seed that is active to grow in scene 2. To interpret it, the first stage of the kingdom here and now begins with revolutionary proclamation of Jesus' message of salvation and His work will be completed by the harvest in the third stage, that is, God's judgment at the end as Joel prophesied: 'Let the nations be roused; let them advance into the Valley of Jehoshaphat, for there I will sit to judge all the nations on every side. Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, trample the grapes, for the winepress is full and the vats overflow - so great is their wickedness! (Joel 3:12-13) What then will happen to those Jesus' followers during the middle stage after accepting His message and Himself as their saviour? In the parable, Jesus illustrates Himself as the farmer, who does not know how the seed (the followers of Jesus) grows. This implies that Jesus will be absent from the scene or at least from direct influence and accordingly will leave their growth process to God, the Father's control. Despite His inactivity, however, His followers unmistakably grow - 'first the stalk, then the ear, then the full grain' - No, more precisely, they ought to grow so that they will successfully be harvested for the entrance into the consummated kingdom of God when Jesus returns to His visible work on earth again. If Jesus had left His parable of "The Growing Seed" without any further reference to the subject of sowing and growing, only an optimistic impression of becoming His disciple would have been left behind and it would have given birth to an interpretation of evolutionarily progressive process of the present existing kingdom. But Jesus did not teach the entrance into the kingdom of God in such an easy way.
On the other hand, the parable of "The Weeds" recorded in Matthew's Gospel teaches an inevitable hardship in the present kingdom. It explains how things will be in the middle period of the present kingdom between sowing and harvest, to which Mark does not refer apart from their unmistakable growth and also God's invisible but entire control from the start to the end. Matthew's parable seems to tell us that such seeming inactivity of the sower lies in the enemy's undermining work, his wicked counteraction to prevent the efficiency of the work of the Lord from going forth. Behind the parable seem to lie Jesus' motives to admonish His impatient disciples who tended to pursue a quick fix, for their premature action of sorting out good and bad by their own judgment now. For Jesus' disciples who always anticipated Jesus to be king of the Jews, His reluctance of activity over political affairs might have been tantalising and they would have wanted Him to do more. However, His answer in the parable was that God allowed the coexistence of good and evil in the present kingdom until the time of harvest, while the good seed had to grow despite evil interference and that it should successfully be harvested by the Lord at the end. This inevitably requires His disciples to be patient for the mixed community of good and evil and at the same time to be disciplined so as not to be overcome by temptations and not to stumble.
Matthew's parable has several points which are worth pointing out. According to Jesus' own interpretation of the parable to His disciples, the sower of the good seed is Jesus Himself. The devil is the enemy who sows weeds in the field, i.e., the present kingdom of God inaugurated by Jesus. The harvest comes at the end of the world and the angels are reapers of the wheat. Time of harvest turns out to be the time of judgment and thus, good is finally and completely separated from evil. The world which rightfully belongs to God from the beginning since He created it, has surfered contamination and defilement by the sons of the evil one, the devil, since the Fall of man. It is when the devil and all his evil followers are removed and God's rule is completely restored to the world that a long awaited prophecy of redemption is to be fulfilled: "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever." (Re.11:15) Until the age of perfection the polarisation between those belonging to the Christ (the sons of the kingdom) and those belonging to the devil (the sons of the evil one) is inevitable and the difference between the two becomes more distinct as the day draws to a close. Knowing that his time is short, the devil, filled with fury, tries to devour God's sons and to pull them away from the Lord and His works through them. The enemy's fierce attack is so intense and so deceptive that even God's elect would backslide during the time. Peter expressed this conflict of Jesus' followers from over-comers' view points: 'Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you, and make you strong, firm and steadfast .' (1Peter 5:9~10). Likewise, Paul and Barnabas referred to this conflict as a condition of entrance to the kingdom of God which Jesus' followers must undergo: "We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God." (Acts 14: 22)
Coexisting in the present incomplete kingdom with the sons of the evil one is never easy for the sons of the kingdom because the devil's prime work is to blind people's minds with unbelief and distortion so that they cannot see the light of the gospel as it is and also to sow obstacles that cause people to stumble. If Jesus calls for His followers to be righteous, i.e., to live a godly life, having the right relationship with Him, the opposite is to be disobedient to the law of God, to be free from the yoke of God's kingdom and thus, to be lawless. To sum up, Jesus' parables of the sowing and growing of the seed could be interpreted to illustrate the reality of God's kingdom here and now though it is hidden from the blinded eyes of the world for the present. The followers of Jesus who depend on the Lord and His life-giving power in their daily lives despite the devil's schemes; deception, distortion and temptation on this side of judgment day, and those who persevere and grow into maturity, led by the quiet work of the Holy Spirit now will ultimately triumphantly enter the consummated kingdom of God.
Turning our eyes to the seasonal characteristics of the weather in the land of Israel, we will hit a fascinating analogy with the parables above. Despite our negative impression about the land from the media today, such as violence, conflict, war and incessant bloodshed, it is said that the land of Israel is beautiful with full of variety, colourful geology and various fruit trees and yet, there is a sense of peace there. I came across an interesting account of how miraculously sweet, juicy and mature grapes are produced in the rather dry rocky land of Israel. There are four prime stages through which potentially sour grapes can be turned to sweet ones by a vine-dresser: (1) The first is an intent work of preparation. (2) The second is a seeming absence of care. (3) The third is the discipline of pruning. (3) The last is the rescue.
According to Clarence Wagner Jr., the process can be explained in the following. In Israel, apart from the heavy rainfall in the four months from November to February and the so-called latter rains from March to April, there is virtually no rain in the remainder of the year. After a long , hot, dry, severe season comes a harvest of the miracle plant, grapes in September. Miracle plant! Because despite going through very dry months without rain in the hot desert climate of the Middle East, juicy sweet grapes are produced. The secret of the survival of the grapes in the second stage of vine-culture lies in the night time hours of dew-fall alone. Dew is often likened to God's hidden blessing in the Bible, also symbolising the quiet work of the Holy Spirit. Likewise, without being noticed, God's Spirit is continually at work during all the processes of growth of God's children in this rough world. Before the vineyard is harshly left to natural courses of the long summer growing season, however, it cannot be ignored that there is hard works of the vine-dresser. He prepares the vineyard in the early spring by cultivating and ploughing. This is the stage (1).The inactivity of the sower after sowing in Jesus' parable, during the quiet long duration of the seed's own growth can correspond to the stage (2) of vine-culture. In such a difficult time of growing in maturity as Jesus' true followers, what is drawn from the analogy of vine-culture is that the only hope is the fact that despite the seeming inactivity of the vine-dresser there is yet silent blessing of the dew. In other words, there is the quiet work of the Holy Spirit to lead them to maturity so as to produce as much fruit as possible. Amongst the hardship, comes the third stage of pruning. This is the stage at which any unproductive branches are removed. In Israel, it is vital to prune off any unnecessary water-consuming branches, especially during seasons of little water in order to produce good fruit. Likewise, pruning (i.e., removed of anything in our lives which causes as to sin) is a painful and yet necessary part of our Christian walk to ensure healthy growth. The final stage will come when grapes are ripe enough and become attractive for all. It is at that time that the vineyard comes under the acute threat of destructive damage and vandalism by thieves, birds, gazing goats, pestilence, natural disasters and so on. However, exactly as the vine-dresser comes to rescue his products for harvest at the crucial moment, so at the very last moment, the Lord will intervene into His followers' crisis to save them out of the enemy's hand and then, they will be glorified in the kingdom of God to live eternally. We will never be free from problems even among those who have accepted Jesus as their Saviour because the present kingdom of God in this world is not a consummated kingdom of God yet.

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

　 This month a money gift has been sent to FREDERIC 's ministry in Kenya once again to be used as relief for the refugees awaiting their repatriation. Pray that the Lord may remove all their confronting obstacles and enable them to identify themselves with the Israelites when they had been delivered: 'Pass through, pass through the gates! Prepare the way for the people. Build up, build up the highway! Remove the stones. Raise a banner for the nations.'
'How many phases of the kingdom of God are mentioned in both Testaments? Which kingdom are you aiming to enter? If you are asked such a question how will you answer? Are you fully aware of what sort of a kingdom Jesus taught?' The theme of "the kingdom of God" in the Bible has never been fully discussed among theologians and ambiguity of the term 'kingdom of God' yet remains within Christianity. I challenged this big subject in my MA dissertation and just obtained the degree in Theology over the interpretation of 'the kingdom of God' in both Testaments from CJCR (the Centre of Jewish-Christian Relations) in Cambridge, U.K. In the thesis I presented three hypotheses concerning the kingdom, with which I believe, the seemingly contradicting claims in both Testaments can be resolved. The majority of Christians might be very surprised at the unexpected developments leading to my conclusion. If you are interested in my thesis let me know. There are some copies at hand right now (only English). Prayers are appreciated: May what I presented in the form of academic paper be sincerely reflecting the Lord's heart and be used to reach out to non-believing people and Jews who have closed their hearts to Jesus and the gospel because of the prevalence of the wrong theology of "Replacement Theology". And also may it be accepted by the Christians who have understood church traditions as the Lord's original teachings.

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