THE KING’S BUSINESS
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parable shows the marvelous outward growth of the kingdom from small begin nings. Christ began His work with a few obscure men but it spread until the nations took shelter under its branches. But an other growth has taken place leaven, i. e., yeast, the product of putrefaction, spreads through the entire mass. Leaven every where in the Bible is a type of corruption. There are two widely-divergent interpreta tions to the parable of the leaven. One makes it a picture of the truth spreading through the whole mass of human society until it all becomes true; the other takes leaven as that which it naturally and prop erly symbolizes, and sees in the parable the teaching that corruption would spread everywhere throughout the outwardly man ifested kingdom. That the latter is the true interpretation there can be no doubt; for we have two inspired interpretations of the parable, both given by the Apostle Paul, the first in 1 Corinthians 5 :6, 7, the second in Galatians 5:8, 9. The woman stands for the apostate Church and the parable is prophetic; it sets forth exactly what the apostate Church did; it mixed the “leaven of false doctrine” (Matt. 16:6, 12) in the children’s bread, and the whole doctrine and life of the Church was leavened. History fulfilled both of these predictions of out Lord to the very letter: there was a great outward growth of those who professed faith in Christ, but along with the outward growth there came an inward corruption, until the whole doctrine and life of the Here we have our Lord’s own interpre tation of His second parable—part of this we touched upon in the passage considered Monday, February 22nd. “Tares ana wheat,” “sons of the kingdom” and “chil dren of God ” are not always distinguish able or separable at the outset from “sons of the Evil One,” “children of the Devil” (vs. 29, 30). But they will be distinguished and separated when they are ripe, the one Church was leavened. Tuesday, February 23. Matthew 13:36-43.
harvest comes, they will be gathered out and sent to their own place. There is deep sig nificance in two words in verse 25 “His enemy.” The Devil is our enemy, buf he is primarily Christ’s enemy. There is no one whom he hates as he hates the Son of God, because Christ receives what the Devil aspired to, the worship of the universe (Heb. 1:6; Rev. 5:1-13; cf. Matt. 4:9; Ezek. 28:16, 17). It is because we belong to Christ whom he hates above all that he hates us also (cf. John 15:19). The Devil seeks to caricature and thwart Christ’s woric at every step. Christ sows good seed in His field, the Devil comes by stealth and sows tares. The parable brings out very clearly the personality of the Devil, the certainty of his existence, the malignity of his heart, the activity of his movements, the cunning of his operations, and the subtlety of his methods. If there is not a personal Devil, the “enemy” of Christ, this parable is mean ingless. There is absolutely no necessity to bring him in. He is in the parable because he exists in fact. The tares in the world are his work. Christ sows “sons of the kingdom’’ by sowing good seed, the Word of God; the devil sows “sons of the Evil One” by sowing bad seed, doubts and ques tions and errors (Gen. 3:1, 4; 2 Thess. 2:9, 10). The Devil did his work “while men slept” ; he always acts under cover, and while men are otf-guard. He does much of his work today while Christians and min isters are dozing. He brings in the subtle ties of disguised infidelity (“higher criti cism,” etc.), masked Pantheism (“Christian Science,” etc.) while we are nodding, and some day we wake up to find the ‘tares” springing up everywhere among the wheat. When the Devil had done his work he "went away,” that is he got out of sight; he always does. To get further out of sight, he stirs up some to argue that “there is no Devil, anyway.” Monday, February 22. Matthew 13:31-35. Two more parables of growth, and “still the kingdom of heaven.” The mustard seed
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