September 1931
401
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K i n g ’ s
STRUCTUREI SCRIPTURE By NORMAN B. HARRISON, M inneapolis, M inn e so ta........ All R igh ts Reserved c f f i e Q fylysieries o f th e O ^ in g d om . . . (Continued ------—^ Satan
seed falls into a clump of thorns left growing. Denied a fair chance to express itself, it is soon choked-L-it is on and in and down but not up. But farther on is a section where the soil is soft and receptive, deep, free from hindrance— there and there only the seed will spring up to an abun dant harvest. The picture drawn is unmistakable. Our Lord has de picted the forces opposed to the gospel—the devil, the flesh, the world. They are the threefold enemy, as closely interlocked in their operations as the strands of a rope are intertwined, an. enemy against which all Scripture as well as experience warns us. We turn to the Old Testament, and they meet us at the outset, in the temptation of our first parents to break fel lowship with God. The tree, that is, its fruit, was made to appear “good for food”—appeal to the flesh; “pleasant to the eyes”—appeal of the world; “to be desired to make one wise”—appeal of Satan (Gen. 3:6). Turning to the Gospels, we find the same three seeking our Lord’s defeat at the very inception of His ministry: the temptation to gratify His personal appetite, to adopt a spectacular, worldly method of attaining His ends, and to secure His kingly right by subjecting Himself to Satan (Matt. 4:1- 11). Turning to the Epistles, we are warned against lov ing the things in the world, namely, “the lust of the flesh” ; “the lust of the eyes’’—the world; “the vainglory of life”—Satan (1 John 2:15-17). T h e T hreefold P ersonality The result, as portrayed in this initial parable, is that, out of four conditions of soil, all but one are rendered un productive. Moreover, this is a divine delineation of things moral and spiritual, as they are and have been from the beginning. It is not a sporadic case here and there but a universal situation. But now, the elements which our Lord shows are pres ent for the defeat of the gospel at its inception He pro ceeds to reveal persisting throughout the gospel age through a threefold personality. Reference to the diagram above calls to mind the per sonalities at work. In the first is Christ, or God, the Re deemer, bestowing new life, followed by Satan, man, and woman. These are all the kinds of personality, there are. With these actors, then, our Lord is giving a complete showing of the spiritual drama being enacted sub rosa during this present age. The diagram also indicates the correspondence between the enmity experienced in parable one and the activity of these personalities in perpetuating this enmity throughout the age. Satan reappears in the second parable; the flesh, personified by man, in the third; the world, personified by woman, in the fourth. Satan and His Tares. If our Lord’s seed has now grown to be wheat, the children of the kingdom, Satan has been far from idle, for he has his own children, growing in among the wheat. This he has accomplished by stealth, “while men slept,” so that the result is a surprise to the Lord’s servants.
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Christ
Flesh World
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Satan 3. M ustard S eed Man 4. T h e L eaven - ^ Woman
V M it h th e preparation afforded us by the study in which we engaged last month, we are now to delve farther into the mysteries of the crucial thirteenth chapter of Matthew. < This second scrutiny will confine itself to a considera tion pf the first four parables, or mysteries. As in all pre vious structural studies, the first four in the series have been found to be intimately linked together, so we find them here. Note the following: (1) The first is introduc tory, the factors it brings into the field reappearing in the three ensuing parables. (2) The element of an active personality is present in all four. This feature is the more notable as it is strikingly absent in the final three. (3) The element of growth, development, and maturity character izes all four. Let us realize that the great Teacher is drawing for us pictures packed full of significance, made possible by His foresight and His insight —a foresight that tells us what will happen, an insight that lays bare the reason why it will happen. T h e T hreefold E nemy Many wonder why the gospel makes such slow progress in the world, why it seems often to fail or suffer defeat. The answer is in these parables that reveal the hidden forces at work to checkmate it. Let us pause to consider how satisfactory a study this chapter furnishes from the fact that the interpretation of these parables is largely determined for us by our Lord’s own defining of terms. The sower is the Lord Himself; the field is the world; the birds are the wicked one; the good seed is first the Word, with its principle of life- giving power, then the lives of those who come to be transformed by i t ; the harvest is the end of the age. Realistic indeed must have been our Lord’s teaching in the first parable as, with appropriate gesture, He directed the eyes of His hearers to a sower on the adjoining slope, busily scattering his seed. There goes the hard-trodden path across the field; falling upon it, the seed has no chance to take root—it falls on it but not in it. The birds eagerly snatch it up. Just beyond is some shallow soil, with a substratum of rock. In the sun-warmed earth, the seed will quickly spring up, but, forbidden any depth of rootage, it will not endure—it is on and in but not down. Then yonder the field is only partially cleared. The
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