The International Sunday School Lessons By J. H. S, LESSON X I I—March 22.— L essons by t h e W a y .— Luke 13:18-35. G olden T e x t : N ot every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of M y Father which is in heaven— Matt. 7:21. I. T he K ingdom of G od (Matt. 13 :31, “ o f heaven” ).
To (1) the germ of truth and grace in the soul: “ seed,” “blade,” “ear,” “ corn” (Mark 4 :2 8 ); “babes,” “men” (Eph. 4:13) : (2) _ the germ of influence, word, act, sympa thetic glance that wins a soul, that wins another, that wins a thousand (John 1:40- 42; Acts 2:38, 41)! 3. Notable Lessons. (1) “Despise not the day of small things” (Zee. 4:10; Ps. 72:16; James 3:5 ). (2) Do not give up. Pray, speak, give, wait. Morrison (China) said: “ I can cast in here and there but a handful of seed”—when he died in 1813 there were ten, now hundreds of thousands of converts. (3) Believe the Bible and the Lord (Isa. 53:11). The tree has grown as Jesus said. III. T he P arable of the L eaven . 1. Scriptural Significance of Leaven. Typically leaven is error, sin, abomination to God. Excluded from Passover festival (Exod. 12:15) ; prohibited God’s altar (Lev. .2:11); equalling hypocrisy (Mark 8:15), malice, the old nature (1 Cor. 5:7, 8), and legalism, false doctrine (Gal. 5 :9 ) ; the only apparent exception (Lev. 7:13; 23:17) is, consistently, due to the fact that sin is al ways present in the communing worshiper. The ferment, therefore, does not represent the improvement of “ the lump.” The tree shows the institutional development, the leaven the constitutional degeneration of the Church. 2. Scriptural and Historical Verification. (1) The whole world, is not “ the whole lump’’ —forbidden by the context ,(Matt. 13). The infertile soil (vs. 3 -7 ); the tares (v. 30) ; the bad fish (vs. 48, 49), etc., prove that the world ( “ age” ) remains evil to the end. The "great tree” is not, and fills not, the “garden.” The “ meal” is a
1. Kingdom Aspects.' Various manifes tations differ in different dispensations. Its universality, before Moses ; its outward (po litical?) as in Israel (1 Ghro. 29:23); in ward, hidden or. spiritual, as in the Church (Col. 1 :13) and heart. The spiritual in Is rael and the external (not political) in the Church, are present but not chief. All as pects will be seen in the consummation (Dan. 2:44; 7:13, 14*; 1 Cor. 15:24, 25). The present is the Church phase and to this the parable refers. 2. Parables. Parables are Divinely givfen illustrations of principles, processes and re alizations of God’s ordinations in the his tory of redemption, and partake of the na ture of types, or predictions. We may not dogmatically apply every word in the par able. The kingdom, e. g., is not like a seed, or a garden, or an aviary ; but its process, is like the growth of a seed, from less to more. II. P arable of the M ustard S eed . 1. " Great Oaks From Little Acorns Grow." From small beginnings the king dom becomes wide-spreading. One man (1 Cor. 3:11), twelve men (Matt. 10:1-5) ; an innumerable multitude (Rev. 7:9). In A. D. 34 there were 3500 Christians, these
(nominally) have become: A. D. 1000— 50,000,000! A. D. 1500-150,000,000. A. D. 1800—200,000,000. A. D. 1880-410,000,000. A. D. 1900—477,000,000.
How small at the first was Christ (or His • doctrine) the seed ! (Isa. 53:3, 1 Cor. 1 :23, 27-29). The seeming impossible came to pass, and will. 2. W ider Applications of the Principle —
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