Listen to audio above while following along with the transcript below. Audio is available for download, as well as the transcript in a Word document at www.biblestudyministriesinc.com
It’s a joy to be here, and I hope you’re not too distracted by my sitting down. I twisted my back a little bit. You would be distracted if I tried to stand up.
As we come to look in the word of the Lord, there’s a principle of Bible study that is absolutely indispensable, and that is total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit. It’s His book. He’s given us this Bible, and only God and can reveal it. No man can reveal it. We need to come and wait before the Lord. I’ll share this verse before we begin. 2 Chronicles 16:9, “The eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth, that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.” The King James Version has a little different wording, but for a long time I misread it. I thought the eyes of the Lord were going to and fro throughout the earth looking for someone who was a strong Christian. But it doesn’t say that. It says, “He’s looking for someone to whom He can be strong.” He’s looking for a weak Christian, someone to whom He can be strong, someone who is completely His. We want to be those people, and let’s just commit our time to the Lord, and then we’ll introduce the burden that Tom and I have to share here.
Our heavenly Father, we thank You for the Holy Spirit who lives in our heart, who searches the depths of God, whose pleasure and delightful ministry it is to turn our eyes to Christ, to unveil Him, and to glorify Him. Lord, we pray in a special way that You would prepare our hearts that we might see Christ, and in an ever increasing tide of blessing, as we fellowship in these meetings, to unveil Yourself. We pray in the matchless name of Jesus. Amen.
It’s a joy for me to be here with my Lillian, and with Tom and Darlene. In the past we have enjoyed your fellowship. We trust that you are here for the same reason we are. We want to see the Lord. We might be speakers by God’s privilege, but we’re also seekers, so we’re all in the same boat. We want to behold the Lord together.
I want to introduce in this introduction lesson with the theme by a couple of passages from the Old Testament and from New Testament, and we’ll sort of be all over the place, presenting what we want to look at. Before I do, I want to read Proverbs 25:2, “It’s the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.” It’s the glory of the Lord to hide things. He enjoys that. It’s His glory; He has a reason for that. He deliberately hides His truth. I promise you this, if God hides something, you are not going to find it unless He reveals where it is. If God hides it, it is hidden. It’s His glory to hide. But the same verse says that it’s the glory of kings to search out a matter. So, God hides it, and it’s royal to search it out. God hides it on purpose because He loves seekers. He loves people to dig and to look. God hides it, and we search, and then God reveals it. Luke 10:21, “At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit and He said, ‘I praise You, Father of heaven and earth, that You’ve hidden these things from the wise and intelligent, and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, this way was well pleasing in Your sight.” This is the only time in the Bible record that we read, “The Lord Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit.” What was He so happy about? The answer is that He was happy that His Father was hiding these things from the wise and the prudent and from the intelligent, because He’s also the God that reveals. He wants to show us what He has hidden. He’s hidden it from the “braniacs”; the wise, the prudent, the sophisticated, the smart people, and He reveals it to those who would be babes and infants, and come humbly before God.
Wouldn’t you think if the One who has hidden things that when He tells you where He’s hidden it, that it shouldn’t be hidden anymore? If He says, “I hide, and that’s my glory, and I’ll tell you where it is,” wouldn’t you think that people would find it? But the wise and the intelligent miss it. Colossians 2:32, here’s the hiding place, “In Whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” They are all hidden in Jesus. This is wonderfully illustrated in the use of parables in Matthew 13:10, “The disciples came and said to Him, ‘Why do you speak to them in parables?’ Jesus answered them, ‘To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. To them it has not been granted.’” And then in Matthew 13:13, “Therefore, I speak to them in parables, because while seeing, they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.” At first it looks like God is just hiding truth from unbelievers, deliberately hiding it from unbelievers. But if you read the record carefully, He hides it from everybody; unbelievers and believers. He hides it from everybody, but listen to Mark 4:33, “With many such parables He was speaking the word to them, so far that they were able to hear. He did not speak to them without a parable, but He was explaining everything privately to His disciples.” Mark 4:10 says that the disciples came to him privately and asked, “What are you talking about?” The point is, He hides it from everybody, except those who come to Him and ask to understand; to ask for a revelation.
As we get ready to look at what is on our hearts, my prayer is, I know it’s God’s glory to hide, but I pray that we’ll be royal. It’s our glory to seek it out, and then He’s so pleased to reveal it. This is a verse on reigning and being royal; Romans 5:17, “For if by the transgression of one, death reigned through one,” that’s Adam, “much more those who receive the abundance of grace, the gift of righteousness, will reign in life through Christ Jesus.” So, how do I reign in life? I become a receiver. Those who are receiving an abundance of grace, they reign in life. If you are not reigning in life, then may God help you be a receiver!
I don’t have a cell phone, and I’m not into technology. My grandkids try to teach me, and it’s all beyond me, but they showed me a picture. They started in outer space and they kept homing in and got smaller and smaller, and then they put it in my house. I don’t know what that’s called, but that’s going to be my method as I introduce you to what is in my and Tom’s heart. I want to begin way out there in outer space, and then I’m going to come in, and come in, and come in, and finally I hope you’ll see what is on our hearts.
Where am I in outer space? Here’s the truth; God loves and has chosen to reveal Himself through analogy—this pictures this. That’s analogy. If fact, all of creation is one big museum; it’s an analogy. Romans 1:20, “Since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power, and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” Everything around you, all of creation is a part of God’s analogy, and the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork. God deliberately chose to have a tree planted by the water to illustrate a righteous man. He deliberately chose to have a woman have a baby to show the wonders of the new birth. He created it that way. He didn’t borrow His title of “Father” from man. He didn’t look on earth and say, “Oh, there’s a father. I think I’ll be called “Father”.” He didn’t borrow the title. He lent it. Every family on earth is patterned after Him. He created all of this universe to picture Him. So, whether you look at the vine, or the branches, or the birds, or the lily that grows, or the birds of the field, it’s all a picture of Him.
You can go through your Bible and look at the wind, the rain, the waves, the ant, the spider, the locust, the soil, the storms, the chaff that blows on the ground, the fading flower, food, drink, water, weather, and erosion, and everything is a picture of something spiritual. This pictures this. If you had His eyes, creation would be exciting. An unsaved person can stand at a vine all their days and never say, “What a wonderful picture of union with Christ.” They’ll never get it. You don’t go out to nature to see God. You come to the Bible, and God teaches you about nature, and then you go out to nature and you see it, and you say, “Wow, this is a beautiful picture.” That’s where we begin. That concept of analogy is too huge, so we’re going to move down to similitudes and then to allegories; this pictures this. Sometimes they are big like the history of Israel in Egypt. That’s a picture of something. The deliverance over the Red Sea, and going into the land are pictures of something. Abraham offering Isaac that history that is literal, but it’s also a picture of something very wonderful.
Sometimes it’s not a type, a whole history, a deliverance out of Babylon, to go back to the land; that’s a picture. Sometimes it’s just a sentence and we miss it and don’t pay attention. “The Ax is laid to the root.” That pictures something. There’s something there. “You are the salt of the earth.” Did you ever consider that? What’s He talking about? “The blind leading the blind.” “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.” That’s a picture. This pictures this. It’s something spiritual. Sometimes it’s a little larger such as a wedding feast that might be a picture of something, or a fisherman throwing out his net. “Consider the lilies of the field and how they grow.” “Consider the birds. They don’t toil and they don’t worry.” All of that, if we had eyes to see it, but we don’t always see it, are pictures.
I’m not going to give you an English lesson about metaphors, and similes, and allegories. That’s not what we’re about. We’re going to be looking at something; this pictures this. As you go through the Bible—“This is My body,” “I am the door,” “Sheep among wolves,”— are all wonderful pictures. “We can be whiter than snow.” “He’ll remove our iniquities as far as the east is from the west.” “He loves you more than the grains of sand that are on the earth.” Those are pictures. Don’t just read those and pass them by. Meditate on those things. They are wonderful pictures. “His word is sweeter than the honeycomb,” and it is. These are wonderful pictures, and very often like we miss God in nature, sometimes we miss Him in redemptive history, and miss Him in these wonderful expressions that He gives. The point is; this pictures that.
Tom and I are going to home in on one of these great sections of scripture. The Bible is full of types and historical pictures. We’re not going to look at that. There’s a number of similitudes, and little sentences where this pictures that. Psalm 18:2, how many are in this one verse? “The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge; my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” There’s no end if you meditate on each one of those things. For this weekend our focus is that we’ll come down a little closer. It’s not the type, and it’s not the allegory, and it’s not the similitude, and it’s not the metaphor, and it’s not the simile. We want to look at the parable; this pictures that.
Matthew 13:34, “All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables, and He did not speak to them without a parable.” A parable is a made-up story that didn’t really happen, but it happens all the time. Let me tell you what I mean by that. It didn’t happen but it happened all the time. “A man went out to sow.” That happened all the time. “A man had two sons.” That is a real story. God didn’t have two sons in mind. He just said, “A man had two sons.” “A woman hid three measures of leaven in her bread.” That happened all the time. “A man prepared a great feast.” That happened all the time. “A fisherman threw his net into the sea.” That happened all the time. I don’t think He had in His mind a particular father or farmer or fisherman or merchant, but He told a story. He made it up, but it was true to life. They aren’t fables or myths; there are not talking animals, unless you are in the Old Testament, and then I’ll have to make an exception. A parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. It’s a physical story with a spiritual truth.
We’re still coming down, but we’re not down yet, because there are different kinds of parables. There are salvation parables, and there are parables about the second coming of the Lord Jesus (that’s a category of parables). Then there are virtue parables; about forgiveness and about having compassion. There are many kinds of parables. I don’t know if you are familiar with Thomas Guthry, a Scottish Presbyterian preacher. I wrote down this sentence because I couldn’t come up with something like this. He said, “The parable is like a float that keeps the truth from sinking. It’s like a nail that fastens truth to the mind. It’s like the feathers of an arrow that make it strike the target. It’s like a barb that hooks the fish.” Well, these past couple of days Tom and I have had a few floats and nails and feathers and barbs that we’d like to share with you from a precious group of pictures; this will picture this. We want to look at this; what is this? You see, that’s where we’re going.
So, we come to the parable. We say, “Alright, we’ve arrived.” No, like I said, parables have their own categories, and there is a group of parables called “kingdom of heaven parables”. If you are familiar with Matthew 13, there are seven in that one chapter; seven kingdom of heaven, or kingdom of God parables; parables called “mysteries of the kingdom of heaven”.
I’ve got quite a large library and there’s a lot written on the kingdom of heaven, and I think in many cases they miss the point. More and more I live to disagree with all my commentaries. I think they miss the basic simplicity. The kingdom is a realm over which a king rules. Is that difficult? That seems so simple to me. A kingdom is a realm over which the king rules, that area over which the king rules and has dominion. Tom and I want to share three kingdom of heaven parables; this pictures this. If the king is ruling, this is what your life should look like. These are parables about what it will be like if, in fact, heaven rules, if the king rules my life. What will it look like?
One more step. We’re not looking at the analogy now. The analogy is the parable. The parable is in kingdom of heaven parables, but that’s also in categories. So, we’re going to break that up, and finally arrive at what we’re going to look at. In Mark 4 there are three parables that are seed parables. There’s the parable of the sower which is a seed parable. There’s the parable of the seed growing secretly, and it’s a seed parable. There’s a parable of the mustard seed, and it’s a seed parable. They are all in Mark 4. Because they are seed parables, they are parables of life, because God has put life into the seed. Whether you are talking about the seed of the woman, or the seed of a plant, God has chosen to put this thing called “life” into the seed. It’s not a mechanical thing. It’s a living thing. It’s not a philosophy, and it’s not a set of principles, and it’s certainly not a set of rules.
Tom and I want to share with you some secrets of life; this pictures this; life, and it’s in the seed. The parables of life describe what my life will look like if the King is reigning, if the Lord is reigning. These are kingdom of heaven life principles. Life is something you cannot analyze. You can divide it into two things; something is alive or it’s dead. That’s pretty simple, but that’s how it is. There is a qualitative difference between something alive and something dead. We know life when we see it, and we know death when we see it. I’m not a botanist, but I think I can tell the difference between a living plant and a stone. There’s a difference between life and death. I’ve seen living people, and I’ve seen dead people. I don’t care if somebody says, “Oh, they look good.” They don’t look good. Somebody says, “Oh, they look so good.” They don’t look good. They are dead. They are gone. They aren’t there. There are living Christians, and there are dead Christians. These are parables of life; figures of speech that carry wonderful secrets of life; the seeds. And in the seed God has blatantly placed this wonderful thing, an incubator seed, a womb of life. God has put life in there.
Man can do a lot of things, but when it comes to what is life, He can only study it. He can’t make it. This is a mystery, and these are the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. What will that life look like if He has the undisputed reign in my life? What will it look like when the kingdom of heaven rules your life? We’re suggesting in these three parables, as in no other place, God unfolds His wonderful mystery. We want to look at these three parables. He’s given us analogies, and parables, and kingdom of heaven parables, and these three parables of seed parables. Someone might say, “Well, why don’t you include the wheat and the tares?” There’s a reason for that. The three we are going to do are positive. The seed that is called attention to in the wheat and the tares is not His. It’s an enemy. So, we left that out.
To introduce exactly what is on my heart and Tom’s, we’ve really laid this thing before the Lord, what I want to do is give you a seed parable from the Old Testament that will prepare us for the seed parables in the New Testament. The seed parable in the Old Testament is from Isaiah 5. Let me read verses 1-4, “Let me sing now, from my well-beloved, the song of my-beloved concerning His vineyard. My well beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill. He dug it all around, removed its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in the middle of it, and also hewed out a wine vat in it; then He expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only worthless ones.” That’s a parable. And then in verse 7 he identifies the vine, “For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are His delightful plant.”
In the Old Testament, because of that verse and verses like it, Israel had the idea that, “God has chosen us to be the vine.” Listen to Psalm 80:7, “Oh God of hosts, restore us. Cause Your face to shine upon us. We will be saved. You removed a vine from Egypt; You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground before it, and it took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shadow; and the cedars of God with its boughs. It was sending out its branches to the sea, and its shoots to the River.” “We are the vine,”—Israel became rather puffed up because they were the vine.
The prophet Jeremiah referred to it, Jeremiah 2:21, “’Yet I planted you a choice vine, a completely faithful seed. How then have you turned yourself before Me into the degenerate shoots of a foreign vine?’” All through the Old Testament you can read about the plant of the LORD, the vine of the LORD. They began to be enamored with gardens, the Garden of Eden, and the Song of Solomon and the gardens and the plants; “We’re His choice plants, and God chose us. We’re the plant of all the earth, and we’re the vine.”
God had to finally tell Ezekiel, “Let them know why I use the word “vine”.” The prophet Ezekiel 15:2, “Son of man, how is the wood of the vine better than any wood of the branch which is among the trees of the forest? Can wood be taken from it to make anything, or can men take a peg from it on which to hang any vessel?” What are you going to do with the wood from a vine? My step-dad worked in wood. I called him up one day when I read that and I said, “What can you make out of a vine?” He called me back a day later and said, “A wreath and a whistle. If you hollow it out you can probably make a whistle, but I can’t think of anything else.” But they still didn’t get it. God said, “I chose a vine because you can’t do anything with it. You can’t make anything. It’s worthless. You can’t make a chair out of a vine.
Ezekiel 15:4, they didn’t get it, so here’s what God did, “If it’s been put into the fire for fuel, and the fire had consumed both of its ends, and its middle part has been charred, is it then useful for anything? Behold, while it is intact, it is not made into anything. How much less, when the fire has consumed it and it is charred, can it still be made into anything?” So, God said, “Look, you’re not getting it. You’re the vine and you produce rotten grapes. You aren’t getting it. You don’t get it. So, because you don’t see how worthless you are as the vine, what if I let you get burned out.” Have you ever met anybody that has been burned out? God said, “If you aren’t worth anything when you think you are something, what would you be worth if you burned yourself out?” That is one of God’s eternal thoughts; that God will allow someone, a teacher, a missionary, a pastor, a Christian, father or mother, to get burned out, just to show them that this idea of them being the vine is not going to work. The prophet Hosea describes it so simply, so succinctly. Hosea 10:1, “Israel is the luxurious vine; He produces fruit for himself.” That’s the problem with the vine. That’s the tragedy of it all.
By the time they got to the New Testament, according to historians, the vine was everywhere; all over Jerusalem. Marcus Dobbs, a Scottish theologian, said that in New Testament times they has the vine stamped on the back their coins, because they were the vine. It comes to a climax in John 15:1, “I AM the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away, and every branch that bears fruit He prunes it, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.” We just sort of read that, “la, la, la”, but when the Lord Jesus said that, put yourself into the sandals of the disciples. This blew their minds and this blew their theology.
Scholars tell us that the vine was the most prominent sight you saw when you went to Jerusalem. It was a golden vine that was over the door of the temple. According to Josephus that vine was not only a golden vine, but there were jewels that were attached to it. Some of the clusters of the grapes were the size of a man, the size of a human being. “We are the vine.” Talk about blowing a hole in somebody’s theology. When Jesus identified Himself, “I am the true,” the word “true” there is “real”, “the reality”. He said, “You don’t have the reality. I’m the real vine, and not you.” I believe He was saying two things when he said, “I am the vine.” The first I’ve already mentioned, but I’ll say it again. When He said, “I am the true vine,” what He was saying is, “I am the vine, and not you. You are not the vine. If you hear it with the ear of the Jewish disciples, that Jesus claimed to be the true vine, I think you’ll get the impact of how that hit them, and they were shocked. To be honest with you, I’ve met a lot of Christians, and I think it’s as much a shock for some Christians today to hear that they aren’t the vine, as it was for those first disciples when they first heard it. They also think that they are the vine. Jesus said, “Without Me you can do nothing.”
Of course, that raises a little problem because you might say, “Well, is that true? There’s a lot of things I’ve done without Him. There are ministries built without Him, there are camps without Him, there are missions without Him, there are TV programs and radio programs without Him, there are websites that are in His name that are without Him, churches are built without Him, books are written, and songs are written without Him. How can He say that without Me you can do nothing?” In the context, He’s speaking about nothing that can be called “fruit”, nothing that is real. What you do is “sour grapes”. What you do is plastic. What you do without Him is imitation. What you do is fake. What you do is not real; nothing living. These are life principles; life parables. And He said that there is no life in you. Life is in Me, and there is no lie apart from Me. Anything that comes apart from Me is nothing. This Christian world is full of nothing. It’s masquerading as life. As long as we look to ourselves to think that we’re the vine, it comes to nothing. If we look at some school or church and think, “That’s the vine, it comes to nothing.” There’s no school or seminary or ministry or some man or woman. It comes to nothing. Jesus said, “I’m the vine, and you are the branches. Apart from Me you can do nothing.”
I think some of you know my testimony. I wanted to be the best vine He ever saved. In 1965 I burned out. It was over. I had to be burned out to realize that He is the vine. We get so weary of trying to produce, get fruit and work for the Lord. In our hearts we want to do what is right, but we can’t, and nothing ever comes of it except sadness. Jesus said that He was the vine to show that we’re not. I think He had another thing in mind, and this will get us close now, too, with what Tom and I want to share.
Not only am I not the vine, but I think when He said, “I am the vine,” that He was saying, “I am the source of life.” Do you realize this? I’ve told you that everything is a picture. When God created life, when He made organic life—I don’t care if you are talking about angels, or talking about man, or insects or whatever—when He created life, He created life to exist only as it maintained union with its environment. If you took anything away from its environment it would die. It couldn’t exist.
Those of you who understand the Lord, pray in your hearts for me that this principle I’m about to share, that the Lord would put reality in hearts that we would understand it. When God created life, He created the environment to support the life. When He made man, He gave him lungs; that presupposed that there was going to be air to breathe. When He gave man a stomach, He presupposed there was going to be food, and water to drink. There is an environment. When He created your eyes to see, He created something to look at. It’s all a big picture, whether you are talking about bugs or plants or animals or fish or birds or a frog. The lily that’s planted in that spot and can’t move; it needs an environment. So, the environment comes to the plant. The sunshine and rain comes to the plant. The nourishment from the soil comes to the plant. The plant can’t go anywhere. The plant can say, “I’m stuck here; it’s not my fault.” God brings the environment to the plant that is necessary. So, the fish was made for water, and the bird was made for the air, and the insects feed off what God has provided, such as the leaves for their environment. It’s all a big picture. You can’t go deep into the sea unless you bring your environment with you. You can’t go into outer space unless you bring your environment with you. We are so dependent on the environment. We need it and can’t live without it.
How long can you hold your breath? That’s another way to say, “How long can live without your environment?” How long can you go without food? How long can you go without water? How long can you go without rest? That’s our environment. We need the environment. What I’m suggesting is that when Jesus said, “I am the vine,” He is saying, “I am the Source. I’m your environment.” Acts 17:28, “In Him we live, we move and we have our being.” He’s our environment. It’s a Person. Colossians 2:10, “We’re complete in Him.” He is our environment. John 15:5 again, “Without Me, you can do nothing.” What a tragic loss for Christians who try to live the Christian life separated from their environment. They just wither and die. Whether you are talking about germs or bugs or birds or fish or plants or trees or whatever you are talking about, the environment was created to be the great giver. All organic life was created to be the great receiver. Everything was created to depend upon its environment. That’s God’s picture, because what the environment is physically, Christ wants to be spiritually. This pictures this. The Lord Jesus is our environment, and without our environment, we can do nothing. We’re going to wither and die. It’s just a picture, but the picture is powerful.
It’s a law of life that any part of a living organism must maintain contact with the source of life. For example, and watch carefully; this is an amazing miracle here. My right hand is alive, but if you put a tourniquet on my arm tight enough, very soon that hand is going to wither and it’s going to get gangrene, and it’s going to die. The reason it’s going to die is that there is no life source. It’s living but there is no life source in my hand. I had a grandmother on my father’s side who had sugar diabetes—very severe. We saw that when she lost both her arms and both her legs, as a stump on a wheelchair, that she was alive. She was alive because the life source was not in her arms or in her legs. Brothers and sisters in Christ, may God teach us that we’re the branches and we’re not the vine, and if we are cut off from our environment—Christ is our environment—it won’t be long before we wither and before we die. We can’t do a thing because we’re not the vine. If I don’t maintain union with Christ… this whole environment and God’s creation and organic life needing an environment is just a picture of how much I need Jesus, and how much you need Jesus. There’s no fruit and no life. There’s imitation; we can attach it. We can act mechanically, but real life, the secrets of that life God has put in these three parables.
We want to share the parables of life; the parable of the sower tells us how life begins. The parable of the seed growing secretly shows us how life continues. The parable of the mustard seed shows us how life is culminated. Those three parables put together give us the secrets of life. You are the branch and He is the vine. You are not the vine and I’m not the vine. We cannot produce except by a constant connection; a union relationship with our environment. He’s my native air. He is my native bread. He is my native water. He is my native rest. He is my environment. I can’t live apart from my environment. May God help us prepare our hearts as we look at these three wonderful seed parables that contain these wonderful secrets of real life! May God deliver us from all unreality!
Father, thank You for Your word, and for teaching us that we’re not the vine, and even letting us get burned out, so that we can finally learn that You are the vine and we’re the branches. You are the source and You are our environment. Teach us to depend upon You spiritually, as much as we depend on our environment physically. Thank You that You will work this in us, because Jesus deserves it. We ask in His precious name. Amen.