Reading:
Matthew 13:1-9, 11, 14-15, 19, 23, 51
You will probably note that one word occurs in all these
varied verses - the word 'understanding' in its different
forms. I have recently been very much impressed with the
necessity for spiritual understanding.
This parable is, I expect, as familiar to you as any of
the parables of the Lord Jesus, and you know that it has
its setting in what are called 'the parables of the
kingdom', that is, in our Lord's teaching concerning the
kingdom of Heaven. However, we have to see it in a larger
setting, for this book which goes by Matthew's name does
make the definitions very clear as to the differences
between the Kingdom of Heaven and the other kingdom.
Indeed, this book sees this contrast being drawn, pressed
and forced to the point of ultimate destiny. There were
the two kingdoms: that kingdom in which the Jews were
naturally, and the Kingdom of Heaven to which the Lord
Jesus was calling men and women. Through this book you
find those two kingdoms in very strong contrast and
opposition, so that the Jewish rulers, teachers and
leaders are found to be increasingly antagonistic to the
Kingdom of Heaven until the issue is pressed at last in
the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, that issue being the
destinies which are here in view and involved, the
destiny of those in the Kingdom of Heaven and the destiny
of all others who are not in that Kingdom.
The Lord Jesus, in His teaching concerning the Kingdom of
Heaven, is working on a selective line, for He is drawing
out from the other kingdom a people for the Kingdom of
Heaven, those who will enter and be born into that
Kingdom. He speaks on the one side of "an evil and
adulterous generation" (Matthew 12:39), which is the
other kingdom, and then, on the other side, He speaks of
"the sons of the kingdom" (Matthew 13:38), and
that is so different.
Now right in that setting stands this most familiar of
all parables, that which we call 'The Parable of the
Sower'.
It is tremendously impressive that the Lord Jesus makes
this whole issue turn upon one thing. This immense issue
of the two kingdoms, the two destinies, the two courses,
the two kinds of people, turns upon this one thing of
spiritual understanding. It is worth looking again at
these verses which we have read:
"By hearing ye shall hear, and shall in no wise UNDERSTAND...
Lest haply they should perceive with their eyes, and hear
with their ears, and UNDERSTAND with their
heart... When anyone heareth the word of the kingdom and UNDERSTANDETH
it not, then cometh the evil one... And he that was sown
upon the good ground, this is he that heareth the word,
and UNDERSTANDETH it... Have ye UNDERSTOOD
all these things?"
Before we can go further, we must see that there are
three realms to be recognized as realms of relationship
between us and God.
First, there is the realm of the unsearchableness and
inscrutability of God and His ways. He cannot be
understood, He is past finding out, and altogether
defeats the last attempts of the wisest of this world to
explain Him. That is a true realm recognized in the
Scriptures.
Then there is another realm in which we are called upon
to obey and go on with the Lord in blind faith, and
without any explanations from Him. Sometimes, we would
say, He WILL not explain Himself. He just calls on
us to go on believing Him without any kind of
understanding or explanation. We know we have to go on,
but that is all we do know. We do not know why we must
take a certain course beyond that the Lord has said that
we must. We have to wait. That is another realm that is
clearly recognized in the word of God.
But there is a third realm - and these are not
contradictory - and that is the realm of education and
instruction unto spiritual intelligence, and
understanding, and the Word of God makes a lot of that.
When this struck me as I was reading this parable, I was
led off, and finally turned up my concordance. I was
greatly impressed with the place that this word
'understanding' has! It occupies several columns, going
right through the Bible, and there are many different
connections. There is far too much for us even to glance
at now, but how important and valuable understanding is!
What a lot really does hang upon spiritual understanding
and intelligence! How essential it is for the Lord's
people, in a day of crisis and perplexity, difficulty and
confusion, to have somewhere, by some means, spiritual
understanding! It was a great thing in Israel's history
that the men of Issachar had "understanding of the
times, to know what Israel ought to do" (1
Chronicles 12:32). I am sure that strikes a chord in us!
Oh, that there was such a capacity, such a faculty and
such a ministry amongst us in these days of confusion and
perplexity - that there were those who had
"understanding of the times, to know what Israel
ought to do"! It is saving in such times if there is
that gift!
Think of those men on the Emmaus road. What a position
and a state they were in! Their world had collapsed and
everything had gone - until He opened their eyes and they
understood the scriptures. A new world was recovered
instantly, and a new hope and prospect were saved by
spiritual understanding.
Oh, the tremendous value and importance of spiritual
understanding! However, let us be quite clear as to what
it is and what it is not.
Of course, it is not worldly wisdom and acute, natural,
intellectual acumen. In this Gospel by Matthew the people
who are most in evidence are the teachers and rulers of
Israel, the scribes and Pharisees, the people who knew it
all and gave the interpretation and explanation of
everything. They are in the forefront of the scene on the
stage here, but later Paul said about them that theirs
was the wisdom of men, not the wisdom of God, "which
none of the rulers of this world knoweth: for had they
known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of
glory" (1 Corinthians 2:8). It was the wisdom of
this world that crucified the Son of God. So spiritual
understanding is not that!
It is not that we have a great and wonderful religious
tradition with all the oracles handed down to us, and we
stand possessed of the great inheritance of religion.
That is not spiritual understanding! It is quite evident
that you can have all that and still go wrong. There was
a man in the New Testament who said that he had
everything along that line, and yet he was the most
vehement antagonist of Jesus of Nazareth and all who were
of that way. He pursued them unto distant cities, haled
men and women to prison - yet he was a man with the
largest tradition. So spiritual understanding is not
that!
Further, it is not a wealth of truth and Christian
teaching. Again, it is possible to have that and not have
spiritual understanding.
What is it, then? To begin with, it is the combination of
two things. First of all, it is the result of the direct
action of the Spirit of God upon the spirit of man. By
nature our spirit is in death, and the Spirit of God acts
to raise it from the dead and bring it into life. And it
is our spirit which is the organ of spiritual
understanding. If we are normal we have a natural
understanding, but by nature we do not possess this
faculty, this organ of spiritual understanding. It is
dead, or dormant, until the Spirit of God acts upon it,
and than we are aware that we have a new faculty - a
faculty of discrimination. We know from that moment,
without being told anything about it, what we should do
and what we should not do, what is right and what is
wrong. It is a new faculty, but that faculty is indwelt
and actuated by the Spirit of God, and is not acting
independently. "The Spirit himself beareth witness
with our spirit, that we are children of God"
(Romans 8:16).
Therefore the combination of these two things, the
resurrection into life of our own spirit and becoming
indwelt by the Spirit of God, constitutes the organ and
function of spiritual understanding. It begins in simple
ways, but education in the Christian life proceeds upon
that basis, and that alone.
There is a link formed by this action of the Holy Spirit
between knowledge and conscience. Note that, for it is a
very important thing. There is a link between knowledge
and conscience, which is a new conscience or
consciousness. That explains the tragedy of many
Christian lives. They have a lot of knowledge without any
conscience about it. It is not a knowledge which produces
a consciousness of life, and so there is inconsistency
and contradiction. They know the teaching, the doctrine,
the truth and what the Word of God says, but there is no
deep exercise in their hearts that gives them, on the one
side, a bad time for any inconsistency and, on the other
side, great joy in realizing that they are being
well-pleasing unto the Lord. This link, you see, is what
is meant by spiritual understanding. 'I KNOW that
that is mere knowledge, information, or truth, but I UNDERSTAND
when the thing affects me, when it touches my life, and
when it brings me up short on matters.' That is spiritual
understanding.
You see, in this chapter all those people received the
Word. They received the ministry of the sower and the
seed, but with three parts of them it came to nothing in
the end. They had the word, they had the sower as much as
anyone, and they had Christ. He was present, and they had
the word of the Lord. All the potentialities of the
Lord's presence, His work and His Word were with them and
were there for everyone. It was not that He gave more
lavishly to some than to others. They all had the same
possibilities, but only a fourth part showed anything for
it, and the Lord said: 'There is one reason only. The
three classes failed in the end because they had no
spiritual understanding. They had the word, the Lord and
everything, but they might just as well have never had
them for all the value that accrued. The one class showed
a return, greater measures, because they had spiritual
understanding.' What did it mean? Well, surely it just
meant that these people laid the word to heart. They
discerned and recognized something of the significance,
the meaning, the importance and the destiny that were
bound up with the word.
Dear friends, these are not the words, nor is this just
teaching. The Lord Jesus was not just broadcasting ideas
and saying: 'You can take it or leave it.' There is
something here that is going to affect us in relation to
the ultimate issue of the Kingdom of Heaven.
A seriousness of attitude is the beginning of
understanding. It is put like this in the Old Testament:
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10). What is the fear of the
Lord? It is taking Him and His word really seriously.
Anything that comes from the Lord is of tremendous
consequence, and that is the beginning of spiritual
understanding.
Now look at the parable and you see what are the values
of spiritual understanding.
Spiritual understanding means that that which comes from
the Lord finds a place for itself in us. There is a
receptivity in the heart. In the first scattering of the
seed the birds of the air found it an easy prey because
of lack of receptivity. It just stayed on the outside, on
the surface, and did not enter in at all. And so it was
stolen. Spiritual understanding means that we draw the
word in, take it in and apply ourselves to it. There is a
receptivity about us.
In the next place, spiritual understanding means an
endurance of and through what the Lord gives. The life of
the seed on the rocky ground was short, so the history of
that bit of the work of God was very short-lived. There
was no real endurance. Spiritual understanding is the
basis and the means of the spiritual endurance of the
work of God in our hearts and in our lives. That is very
clear and, I think, very simple. It is so possible, as we
know, to hear it all and, in a way, know it all. Then,
when the real test is applied, things begin to get
difficult, the sun rises with scorching heat, and we get
into the fires, the adversities and the suffering, all
our knowledge means nothing. All that we have heard and
all that has come to us just stands for nothing, and our
spiritual history goes. I am afraid that is how it is
with many - there is no endurance through the scorching
sun and the fires.
Then, what about this that fell among thorns? "And
the thorns grew up, and choked them." Spiritual
understanding has a wonderful power to set up in us a
resistance to this world and its fires, but there was no
resistance here. The thorns sprang up and choked the
seed. They were not challenged and subdued. The Lord's
explanation shows that there was no resistance because
there was no spiritual understanding, no real spiritual
apprehension.
Give me men and women, however simple according to the
standards of this life, who have spiritual insight,
spiritual discernment, spiritual judgment, spiritual
sensitiveness and spiritual aliveness to the things of
God! There is a wonderful resistance in those lives when
other things come along with their appeal - the thorns,
the cares and the pleasures which come along to spoil and
overpower the work of God - and this resistance is
because of spiritual understanding. You meet people like
that, but you also see people driven away from the Lord
by adversity or by prosperity. When you ask yourself why
that is you have to say: 'Well, the root of the matter
was evidently not in them. They had the things, but not
the MEANING of them. They really did not
understand where they were and what it all meant.'
Spiritual understanding means depth, and that brings us
to the fourth class. Everything depends upon our having
depth.
Oh, for more of this spiritual understanding that has
these results! First a receptivity, which means that we
embrace the truth. Then an endurance against all
adversity and temptation. Then a resistance to everything
that comes to us which is not true or right, and finally
a depth that lays hold and reproduces.
Now, spiritual understanding is shown quite clearly in
the Word to be essential to a sound beginning in the
Christian life. Why is it that such a large proportion of
those who seem to make a good beginning do not go on?
They fall away and you cannot find them after a little
while. Why? Because they did not have a beginning in
understanding what all this is about, what it means, what
it implies and what it involves. It was an appeal on the
outside, perhaps a very powerful one and so they made
their answer, but where are they after a little while?
Spiritual understanding, says the Lord Jesus here, is the
answer to that. Be very sure that your converts
understand! Do not be satisfied with any light and
superficial spiritual catch phrases, but seek to get them
truly grounded in the Word of God and rooted in OBEDIENCE
TO THAT WORD.
The unproductive soils, by their very contrast,
illustrate for us the essentials of a spirit of
understanding. The opposite of the hardened ground is the
heart which is ready to receive with meekness the seed
which is sown in it. Always the Lord requires of His
children that they have a teachable spirit. Those who are
self-assured and independent give little opportunity for
the Word to do its cleansing and transforming work. So
the first requisite for an understanding heart is simple
dependence and a genuine humility, with a willingness to
abandon one's own conceits in order to allow God to do
His own work of correcting and reshaping according to His
will.
Then there is the stony ground, the opposite of which is
surely a heart softened and broken under the hand of God.
This is not natural to any of us, for even the weakest
nature can be strong and stubborn in its unwillingness to
submit to the inward working of the Word. Even though the
experience may be painful to the flesh, it is essential
that our own strength and self-esteem should be set aside
to make room for God. Without such experiences of being
broken down and opened up by the working of the Cross it
is not possible to become spiritually sensitive to the
will of God.
Finally, it is essential to be single-minded if we are
really to understand the ways of God. Whether the
"thorns" be ugly or whether they be seemingly
beautiful, if they are rivals to God's speaking then they
must not be tolerated. Spiritual understanding means the
ruthless setting aside of lesser things in order to make
room for God. The man who is truly taught of God is the
man who makes it his daily exercise and delight to give
absolute priority to the hearing and obeying of the voice
of God.
We need to pray that among the children of God there may
be an increase of spiritual understanding in the
knowledge of Him, and we need to remind ourselves that
the essentials to such an understanding are humility,
brokenness and singleness of heart.
From "A Witness
and a Testimony" Nov-Dec 1971, Vol. 49-6.