The Parables of the Kingdom (2)

0:00We praise the Lord for thy great plan, that we might well in place may be. Thou with Him thus we filled with thee. Thou in the sun as fresh might be. Welcome to Life Study of the Bible with Witnessly, a program brought to you by Living Stream Ministry. Witnessly, a servant of the Lord for over seven decades on five continents, culminated his ministry with a 21-year book-by-book exposition of the entire Bible, which he called a Life Study. This Life Study is the basis of our program today, which includes short portions of the spoken messages given by Witnessly. Now, let's join today's Life Study.

1:02All genuine Christian believers love to hear the preaching of the gospel. We admire greatly those whom the Lord has raised up with the gift of evangelism, and most of us pray fervently for the spread of the gospel. But as such believers, we should also ask ourselves a couple of basic questions regarding the gospel. First, what is the gospel? Then, what is the goal of the gospel? If our answer to the first question did not incorporate the realization that the gospel really is just Christ Himself, then we need some further enlightenment. And if our answer to the question regarding the goal of the gospel was something along the lines that the goal of the gospel is to save sinners so that they can go to heaven, and we should pray, as Paul the Apostle prayed, that the Father in his mercy would grant us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of him. Bill Lawson has joined us. We continue our Life Study from the gospel of Mark and

2:05Bill, this notion, let's start with the first of these two sort of rhetorical questions I posed in the opening here. To say that the gospel is really Christ Himself, help us with a kind of a right understanding of what this implies. Of course, Chris and the Greek language, the gospel is the good news in the Greek. We think the gospel is just merely a message about the Lord Jesus, containing information about the Lord, presenting God Himself to us so that we can believe in that kind of thing or that message or that group of teachings or doctrines, and that will lead us into a relationship with our Lord and Savior. Of course, there is that factor, but I don't think, as we'll get into it a little later, that this is the depth of what we are looking for. We have to realize that when the gospel is mentioned, and even more so, as we see in the gospel of Mark, it's far more than just a message that we hear to bring us from one state into another

3:07state or to bring us from on the earth to heaven one day. It's much more intrinsic than that, and we will take a look at this as we get into this gospel. Bill, how about the notion that in a very real sense, we can equate the gospel with the person of Christ Himself? Again, I think also this is a new kind of thought for most believers. We just don't see it as a person. We see it as a thing you do. You do a certain thing. You study the Bible, you read the Bible, and you take information, and you convey that to people about a bunch of information that you just read, and you present that, and if they accept or reject that information, that depends whether or not their eternal destiny is based on that. But we have to see that the gospel is a person, like you were saying, that that is revolutionary, that it's not just a simple person Jesus, but as we'll see, it's the entire triune God is our gospel. It's not just the Lord, it's the Father, it's the Son, it's the Spirit.

4:08It's really the entire person of the triune God who enters into us, becomes life to us, lives in us, is manifested with us, is expressed through us. That is really the gospel. So I appreciated what you pointed out, Bill. It's not just how we process this information, good news that it is. It's really how we engage this person as a result of what we have heard, and what the Spirit has operated within us as we're hearing to bring us into a kind of genuine contact and interaction with this living one. And Bill, I think the other half of the message today is related to the goal of the gospel. And I think this will be very enlightening to a number of our listeners today. This person, once in us, really is looking to issue in something, isn't he? That's right. The Lord Himself did not enter into us just to take away our sins, just to give us something good, just to make us good people when we were bad people. There is a definite goal with

5:11this gospel. It has an issue. The Lord is after something. The Lord just doesn't sow Himself into people indiscriminately without an issue. So we have to see this more and more. Well, you just use the word sow. That really brings us to our first segment today. We're in Mark chapter 4, verses 2 and 3, and we'll go farther than that, but let's start there. And he taught them many things in parables and said to them in his teaching, listen, behold, the sower went out to sow. He picks up this thought again in verse 14, the sower sows the word. And he said, sow is the kingdom of God as if a man cast seed on the earth, sowing very much related to the gospel and to the issue of the gospels we'll see in this first segment. Here's when it's lead. What is the gospel? The gospel is that the very God one day became incarnate to be a man. Since this one came, the Old Testament is over. And he himself is the gospel. But just

6:20thus far, you still don't know, start to say, what is gospel? The gospel is just this wonderful one coming to sow himself as a seed, a seed of life. Even in this chapter, chapter 4, you could see this. He sowed the seed. What is the seed? That is the word, right? The word out of his mouth is the seed. And in the seed is the divine life. So this seed of the divine life is just he himself. And this seed is the seed of the gospel. The Lord Jesus sowed the seed into the human heart. And in this chapter, the human heart is likened to the soil. Our human heart is a field,

7:29is the soil into which the Lord Jesus sowed himself as the seed of life, which is the seed of the gospel. What is the kingdom, they are saying? The kingdom is just the God-man, Jesus Christ. Firstly, as a seed sowed into his believers, then the seed will grow. By its growing and developing, an issue will come out. And the issue is the kingdom. And this issue will bring all his believers to raise the goal. And the goal is also the kingdom. This chapter, chapter 4 of Mark, serves particularly these purposes.

8:34Bill, this chapter, very much parallels chapter 13 and the gospel of Matthew, also with several of these parables, some of them very similar, related to this matter of sowing and what this sowing produces. We touched on earlier as we were discussing that the understanding that the gospel is the imparting of information is really challenged here, because we just heard him say, really an opposition to that, that the gospel is the sowing of himself as the divine seed of life. These two notions are miles apart, aren't they? They really are. You mentioned the gospels. We know in the synoptic gospels of Matthew 13, Mark 4, and Luke 8, they all touch this portion. And in here, brotherly touches this matter of a divine life seed sowing into human heart. That is not in the natural concept. That is not easily understood. But when you consider, that s what the Lord Jesus was. He was the embodiment of the entire triune God.

9:36As he speaking to those disciples, he is really sowing himself as a person into them, to be life to them, to grow in them, to develop in them, and to issue in an enlargement of himself of the divine life, which is God s kingdom. So there s a lot here concerning the matter of the divine life. The divine seed, the metaphor is very clear. You know, we see it all through, as you said, these three chapters, one in Mark 1 and Luke 1 and Matthew. And it s got a very organic kind of sense to it, doesn t it? I mean, it s has to do with a picture of a farmer, dropping a seed into the ground and taking proper care of it with a definite expectation and hope that it s going to grow into something. That s right. Years ago, Chris, I grew up in northern Indiana, my uncle had a 40-acre farm in Valparaiso, Indiana, and he would take his era s kids to his 40-acre farm, and we would spend all day pulling rocks out of the soil. But he had sown a lot of seed in those 40 acres to grow, you know, alfalfa and weed and this kind of thing. It s really a

10:39life matter. It s not so much an organizational thing or a campaign many times we make it that, but it s a sowing of the life element, the divine life itself sown into the human beings as a divine life. And we have to see, like you say, it involves living things, plants and soil and watering and growing. It s absolutely a matter of the divine life. Bill, we re going to come to a section now as a continuation of this thought. And again, I think we re going to see some of the common notions challenged very directly. Particularly, we re going to take up this matter of Christ being in the believer. We ve got some verses that state this outright. Here are a few that not only Christ is in the believer in Ephesians 4, one God and Father of all who is over all through all and in all. So here we have the Father in the believers. Then of course, the Colossians 127, to whom God willed to make known what are the

11:44riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. And finally, Romans 8.9, but you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. So here we have verses that show us Bill that the Father is in us, the Son is in us, and the Spirit is in us. How do we to understand such verses? That s really the topic of this portion, isn t it? Right, really. So we have to see it s they re not three separate persons in dwelling us. The Word of God makes it very clear, like you said, Christ. The Father is definitely in us. The Son is also in us, and the Spirit also in dwells us, but they re not three separate detached persons. They re one person who is triune in essence, and in his economy, he dispenses himself right into us to be life and everything to us. All right, here s witnessly with this middle section of our program today. Now today, people arguing, is Christ in you, or Christ is not in you,

12:51there is a big debate today. They say, Christ, too big, and we are too small, we can never contain Christ, impossible. So it is not Christ in us, but Christ has a representative. And the representative is the Spirit. I got sick. I got sick of this kind of theology. Then they say, well, this sin may be in you, but sure the Father is not in you. The Son is the Son, the Father, the Father, they are to separate persons. In the Godhead, there are three separate distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The Son may be in you. Even his in you, the Father is not in you. My goodness, Ephesians 4, 6, says clearly, God the Father is one who is the Father above you,

14:00throw you and in you. Well, forget about all the debates, they're saying, don't get sick. The child God is all to get enough. The Lord Jesus did tell us in John 14, 23, whoever loves me, my Father will love him and I and my Father will go to him. The Father's Son will go together, not the Son come, the Father's Son didn't have it. No, no, no, no. The Father says, all come together to make a boat with this lover. We know the child God is in us. This chapter teaches us to see the very gospel announced by John the Baptist and preached by the Lord himself. This very gospel is the child God in humanity as a seed of life soon in our heart.

15:11If you are going to know what is the Kingdom God, you have to see this. Well, Bill, this touches one of the great debates in all theological examination throughout the centuries and that is how to understand the triune God in the sense of these three distinct persons and it's proper, isn't it? It's part of the divine truth, it's part of the faith that we have the three persons distinctly in the Godhead, the Father, eternally the Son, eternally in the Spirit eternally, but it's this matter of separation of the three persons where we really lose touch with what the divine revelation is really conveying, isn't it? That's right. When we get into the matter of persons, we have to be very careful because the English language uses the word persons and they have the connotation of three separate persons there, the person of the Father, the person of the Son and the person of the Holy Spirit. But we have to realize they are uniquely

16:15one, the three are uniquely one, but they are distinctly three. The Father is distinct from the Son, the Son is distinct from the Spirit, but the Spirit is not represented in the believers. The Spirit is the reality of the Son and the Son is the embodiment of the Father. So all three are in us, all three are eternal, all three go in here and coexist at the same time. Yet we have to realize in this gospel of Mark here, this seed sewn into us is the very triune God Himself embodied in Christ and realized as the Spirit. Bill, when we say that the three are distinct but not separate, that really is implying, isn't it? That the coming of one is the coming of all three. That's right. So we have the verses that are so clear, we don't need to really interpret the three verses that we read that He alluded to, Ephesians 4, 6 and Colossians 1, 27, Romans 8, 9. It's very clear, the Father is in us, the Son is in us, and the Spirit is in us, but not as three separate persons. We didn't have

17:19three separate experiences, did we? We just believed and what happened at that moment when we believe? Right, so easy for us to fall into tritheism. The triune God is not only one in essence, that means in His being, but three in His economy to dispense Himself into us. So when the soul were there, the Lord Himself was sowing Himself into them, all three were being sown into them, as the very triune God. Well, these are mysterious things. It's good to point out that, you know, it's one thing to study the three in one God, theologically, but I think for most of us, the best is to experience the reality of this divine person sowing Himself as the seed of life within us, and that's what we really should maintain our focus. Exactly. Bill, let's go on. We want to continue this thought, particularly this matter of the kingdom being the issue, the result of

18:21this sowing process that has been going on from the very first time when the gospel went forth, this sower began to sown, and the issue, the result, is the kingdom of God as Matthew, Mark, and Luke all point out. All right, here's what we're going to sleep with our last segment. I don't know biology, but in your mother tongue, you do have this word, right? What is this? Jin, the triune God in His humanity sowing into our being is the Jin of the kingdom. Without the Jin, you don't have any existence. Your births, your being, your existence all come from the Jin. The very triune God in His humanity sown into us is the very Jin of the kingdom. Hallelujah. Isn't this wonderful? That the triune God, one day, became a man by the name Jesus Christ.

19:26He was the one who was there for giving the prolific. You could see the sin of man having the authority to forgive people, and that is divine. The Godhead is there, Deity is there. But hallelujah, this one in His preaching has been sown into us. Today, this one is no more just in that room, with the roof broken for this one today. We all have to say hallelujah. Today, for me to contact Him, we don't need to climb up the roof and break the roof. He has been sown into our heart. Who has been sown into our heart? The Jin, the triune God incarnated in humanity. Wonderful. You know, it seems we didn't know each other.

20:26I didn't know many of you. Who are you? I don't know. But when I see you, I just love you. And I believe you love me. Why? We have a loving fact of it in us. Oh, the triune God incarnated in humanity has been sown into all of us at the seed of life. We have a great man. We have a great man. We have a great man. We have a great man. We have a great man. Bill, for the sake of our listeners who may not have understood his little story here at the end about loving, the believers he was in the presence of, actually it's very pertinent to the point here, the point of this divine seed being the gene, G-E-N-E of the kingdom, something again, very organic. And he's using his evidence here, the very true experience I think of all of us. And that is that when we get into the presence of other believers spontaneously, there's a kind of

21:29an affection, a kind of a loving of one another isn't there. And that's evidence that there is something else operating than just our good Christian conduct. Right. You might say it's a proof or a manifestation that something of the divine life Christ has been sown into us. Of course, brotherly makes it very clear that triumphant God is just this very one in humanity sown into us as the divine life. It's a life gene just like we have human genes that convey all of our characteristics and what kind of a person we're going to be. That's built into the human life, also built into and innately in the divine life are all the riches of the divine life, the expressions, the love, the light, the attributes, the virtues, all of these rich things of the triumphant God are genes, right? Are part of the gene that has been sown into us so that when I receive the sowing of this seed into me and another person that maybe I've never known before, another believer in the Lord also has that. Spontaneous that there's a love that

22:33emanates from both of us toward one another because that's part of the elements and the manifestation of the gene is the divine love for one another. So it's really an issue. It's a goal is God wants a kingdom which is a full expression of His divine life. It's a realm of the divine life that begins when Christ is sown into us. He grows in us. He matures in us. He develops in us. And the issue is the enlargement of that very one is a kingdom. It's not some outward thing like Walt Disney kingdom or something like that. It's a realm of the divine life with all the riches and the activities involved with the divine life. So when we have an experience such as the one we've been talking about here, spontaneously experiencing God's love for another person, spontaneously coming out of us and it being returned. That is really a miniature of the kingdom isn't it because now there's a realm where this divine life is operating and producing, issuing in what has been programmed into that divine seed. That's right. This is a much higher

23:38goal, Bill, than just sinners being saved so that they could go one day to heaven. We really need to be enlightened, don't we? Well, I know in my particular background, it was just a matter of winning souls. If I could bring someone to Christ, then that would be very good. I would be maybe more honored sometime in the future. But I had no idea that I was sowing the very triune God into people as a seed so that the divine life would enter into them, grow in them, develop in them and enlarge in them with other believers to bring us into God's kingdom, which is a full realm of the divine life. Wow. Bill, I wish the clock would have slowed down today so we could have spent an adequate amount of time. We touched some things that are not easy and we just pray the Lord cover our shortage because these are deep concepts, but there is surely the amen within us, isn't there? When the Lord shines in such a marvelous way, unveiling the issue, the goal and the reality of His real gospel, the real good news. Good to have you as

24:38always thanks for being a part of the program. Right. These are really glad tidings. Yeah. They really are. We hope you'll contact us about getting the printed messages that come along, that the printed messages that we're following in these life study broadcasts. If you would like to get that to these two volumes of the life study of Mark, please call us toll free 1-888-Life Study, 888-543-3788. Thank you for being with us today. Be with us again in our next program as we continue this life study of Mark for Bill Lawson and Chris Wilde. Thank you very much for listening to it. Witness Lee's remarkable commentary on the Life of Abraham, taken from the Life Study of Genesis, is now available from Living Stream Ministry in a single volume entitled Abraham, called by God.

25:40Abraham, called by God by Witness Lee, is available at Christian bookstores everywhere, or you can order by calling 1-888-543-3788. That's 1-888-543-3788.