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Scripture Reading: Matt. 13:4-7, 19-22, 24-33, 36-43
I. Under the enemy Satan’s frustration:
А. By the human heart as the wayside hardened by worldly traffic and with the evil spirits of Satan as the birds snatching away the word of life — Matt. 13:4, 19.
B. By the shallow heart, which has hidden sins, personal desires, self-seeking, and self-pity as rocks hindering the life seed from taking root in the depths of the heart and is stumbled by affliction and persecution — vv. 5-6, 20-21.
C. By the anxiety of the age and the deceitfulness of riches as the thorns choking the life seed in growth to make it unfruitful — vv. 7, 22.
II. Under the enemy Satan’s damage:
А. By sowing tares (signifying the sons of the evil one) in the midst of the wheat (signifying the sons of the kingdom) to restrict and damage the growth and development of the wheat — vv. 25-30, 38-42.
B. By changing the nature of the small mustard, signifying the church in life, which is good for food supply, into the nature of a tree, signifying the big Christendom in confusion, which is good for lodging the evil ones, signified by the “birds” — vv. 31-32.
Note: The three items above in Roman numeral I frustrate the growth of the life seed in the believers and restrict the multiplication of Christ through His believers, whereas the two items in Roman numeral II, on the one hand, bring in a mixture among the components of the church and, on the other hand, change the nature of the church and make the appearance of the church abnormal.
III. Under the enemy Satan’s corruption:
А. By leavening the initial church, typified by the two loaves of the wave offering, offered to God on the day of Pentecost (Lev. 23:15-17), and confirmed by the sinful case of Ananias and Sapphira in deceiving God the Spirit (Acts 5:1-11) and the case of murmuring concerning the overlooking of the daily dispensing to the widows (6:1).
B. By leavening the church in Corinth with the gross sin of fornication (1 Cor. 5:1-8).
C. By leavening the church with different teachings other than the economy of God (1 Tim. 1:3-4).
D. By leavening the entire three measures of meal (fine flour made of the grains of wheat) through a woman (the Catholic Church as the false prophetess Jezebel — Rev. 2:20) — Matt. 13:33.
E. By leavening the early church with Judaism (in Sabbath keeping — Col. 2:16 circumcision practice — Acts 15:1-2; Gal. 6:15 the so-called holy diet — Acts 11:2-3; Gal. 2:12-13 and traditions — 1:14), Gnosticism (Col. 2:8), and asceticism (vv. 20-23).
F. By leavening the church with Catholicism in the papal system, hierarchy, heresies, idolatry, and pagan practices.
G. By leavening the church with Protestantism in hierarchy, being living in name and dead in actuality, different teachings, traditions, modernism, worldliness, and divisions.
H. By leavening the church with nationalism, racialism, socialism, liberalism, politics, etc.
I. By leavening the church with the believers’ natural man, flesh and its lust, sin in their nature and sins in their deeds, and all the evil things listed in Galatians 5:19-21.
Note: The enemy Satan’s leavening of the church is to corrupt the church in its nature and contents. Even the life element (the entire meal made of the grains produced by the wheat), of which the church is constituted, is leavened. This disease of the church is in its constituents. Such a disease of being corrupted by being leavened is incurable.
In the previous chapter we saw the constitution of the Body of Christ with the all-inclusive Christ as the life-element. Matthew 13 shows us how Christ came as the Sower to sow Himself as the life seed of wheat, signifying the word, into the human heart as the growing earth (vv. 3, 19b). The growing of Christ in the good earth of the human heart is for His multiplication to be the constitution of the church to fulfill God’s eternal economy (vv. 8, 23; John 12:24; Eph. 3:8-10).
In Matthew 13 we have such a picture of positive things, but we also have a picture of negative things. Matthew 13 also reveals the constitution of the Body of Christ under the enemy Satan’s frustration, damage, and corruption. Satan works to undermine the Lord’s work in three ways — first to frustrate, then to damage, and finally to corrupt. I hope that we have the spiritual capacity to see this vision of Satan’s schemes. We need a vision, not just a doctrine or a teaching. We need to see a heavenly “movie,” a heavenly vision, which deeply impresses us with the enemy’s three kinds of works: his frustration, damage, and corruption. In chapter 13 of Matthew the Lord Jesus not only opened up the heavenly things but also opened up the hellish things.
Before we begin to fellowship about the enemy’s work seen in Matthew 13, I would like to say a further word about the Lord’s coming. Christians commonly believe that Jesus came the first time and that He will come a second time. But we also need to realize that His coming has not been fully consummated. It is still going on. On the one hand, Jesus has come, but on the other hand, Jesus has not finished His coming. For Jesus to come down from heaven to earth and be conceived in the womb of a virgin through incarnation was an instant thing, but for Him to come into you and me took a long time.
Christ’s coming has three great, main steps — incarnation, death, and resurrection. The first step was incarnation. Jesus as the only, unique God lived in eternity before time. Then He created the universe and man. Four thousand years after the creation of man, He stepped out of eternity and into time. When He came out of eternity and stepped into time, He stepped into humanity. In eternity past He was God, but in His incarnation He stepped out of eternity into time and with His divinity into humanity.
It is a wonder that the almighty, infinite God entered into the womb of a young virgin and remained there for nine months! Matthew 1:18 and 20 tell us that Jesus was begotten of the Holy Spirit. God was born into the womb of Mary. Then after nine months He was born out of Mary to be both man and God, a God-man.
How do we know that God stepped out of eternity and into time and with His divinity entered into humanity? We know this because the Bible tells us so (John 1:1, 14). Jesus is a God-man. In the whole universe there is a person who is both God, with His divinity, and man, with His humanity. He is not only according to God’s kind but also according to man’s kind. According to history, the most unique person is Jesus Christ. He has both divinity and humanity.
Christ came in incarnation, but it took Him a much longer time of passing through the processes of human living, death, and resurrection to come into us. We know that Jesus now lives in us not only because the Bible tells us so (Gal. 2:20a; 2 Cor. 13:5) but also because our experience testifies that it is so. My experience told me that Jesus lived in me. It was the same with all of us who have received Him. His coming to live in us changed us from naughty ones to “Jesus gentlemen” and “Jesus ladies.” This extra One has made us different from the people of the world. Today we are the testimony of Jesus (Rev. 1:2, 9). Jesus lives in us. We know this because of what the Bible says and because of our experience.
The incarnated Jesus came into us by passing through a long process. Following His incarnation Jesus lived on the earth for thirty-three and a half years. Then He went to the cross to die. His death was the second major step that He took in order to come into us. By being crucified, He took care of all the negative things and He solved all the problems. He took away our sin and our sins. His death solved everything and terminated everything of the old creation.
He died on the cross, was buried, and on the third day He resurrected. His resurrection was the third major step of His coming. First Corinthians 15:45b tells us that in His resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit. In His incarnation He, as God, became a man. In His resurrection He, as the last Adam, became a life-giving Spirit. Therefore, Christ is God, Christ is man, and Christ is the life-giving Spirit. Today the very Christ who has come into us and who is still living in us is God, man, and the Spirit.
The Bible reveals emphatically that Christ the Lord is the Spirit. Today the Lord Jesus is the omnipresent One in resurrection. He is in heaven, He is on earth, He is in you, He is in me, and He is in millions of His believers. From the day that we called on the Lord and received Him, we realized that Someone came into us and was even added into us. Jesus can enter into us because He has become the life-giving Spirit. Today He has finished His three major steps of incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. He became a man and in man He died, solving all the problems and taking away all the troubles in the universe. Then in resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit so that He could enter into us. Today He is in us.
Christ is still coming today because He is still in the process of entering into millions of people. But even in such a so-called Christian nation as the United States, millions of people have not yet believed in the Lord Jesus. The Lord desires all men to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4). We have to go with the Lord to them to bring the Lord to them. He is still in the process of His coming until He eventually will come from the heavens to the air and from the air to the earth. That will be the ultimate step in the consummation of His coming.
Today we have such a wonderful Lord Jesus within us. This is all bright, all in the day, and all positive, but with the day there is also the night. We need to see the night, the negative picture, presented to us in Matthew 13. Matthew 13 reveals the constitution of the Body of Christ under the enemy Satan’s frustration, damage, and corruption.
Matthew 13 tells us that the Lord went out as the Sower to sow the seed into the hearts of many people. The Lord revealed that the human heart is of four categories. Three are negative and one is positive.
The first kind of heart is likened to a place beside the way (v. 4). Beside the farming field is a way, and the place beside this way becomes hard because of too much traffic. Because it is close to the way, it is easily hardened by the traffic of the way. When the seed falls on the hard wayside, there is no way for the seed to get into the soil. This affords a good chance for the birds from the air to snatch all the seeds away.
Jesus is sowing the seed, but your heart may be too hard. The seed cannot penetrate into your heart. It remains on the surface of your heart, and then the birds, signifying the evil spirits, come to snatch away the word. In the whole universe there is not only the Holy Spirit, the life-giving Spirit, but also the evil spirits. They are crouching, watching, and waiting to snatch away the word sown in the hardened heart. We can see Satan’s frustrating work with the human heart as the wayside hardened by worldly traffic and with the evil spirits of Satan as the birds snatching away the word of life (vv. 4, 19).
On the surface your heart may be soft, but it may not be deep. Instead, it may be shallow. Matthew 13 shows us the shallow heart, which has hidden sins, personal desires, self-seeking, and self-pity as rocks hindering the life seed from taking root in the depths of the heart and is stumbled by affliction and persecution (vv. 5-6, 20-21). All these negative things are typified by hard rocks underneath the surface of the field, making the earth shallow. These rocks within us hinder the life seed from taking root in our heart. Those with such a heart are stumbled when affliction or persecution comes. We have seen many like this. First, they heard and received the gospel joyfully, but after a time persecution and affliction stumbled them because there was no root penetrating into their being that could cause the life seed to live long in them.
We have believed in the Lord Jesus, receiving Him as our Savior, but day by day we have to deal with the anxiety of this age and the deceitfulness of riches. Money is a big lie, deceiving everybody. The anxiety of this age and the deceitfulness of riches are like thorns to choke the life seed in us in growth and to make our heart unfruitful (vv. 7, 22). Many believers are like this. They believe in the Lord Jesus. They call on Him and even pray to Him. Yet some thorns as the anxiety of life and the deceitfulness of money choke the life seed in them.
The above three kinds of hearts are under the enemy’s frustrating work, but there is a fourth kind of heart. The fourth kind is the good heart, typified by the good earth. A good heart is a heart that is pure, single, and absolute toward God. It is a heart that does not care for the anxiety of the age or for money. A person with such a heart is pure, single, and absolute only for God. There is no choking of the life seed, no frustration, and no hindrance within him, so the life seed of Christ can grow in him to bear fruit, making him fruitful in Christ.
Man’s heart was created by God, but Satan came in to make man’s heart either like the wayside, like the shallow earth, or like the earth full of thorns choking the life seed. Satan works so that man’s heart would not be available for God’s purpose. All the different kinds of hearts in the negative sense are the results of Satan’s frustrating work.
Satan, God’s enemy, not only frustrates the constitution of the Body of Christ but also works to damage it.
Satan works to damage by sowing tares (signifying the sons of the evil one) in the midst of the wheat (signifying the sons of the kingdom) to restrict and damage the growth and development of the wheat (vv. 25-30, 38-42). Tares are false wheat. At the initial stage of their growth, they look exactly like wheat. It is impossible to distinguish wheat from tares until the fruit is produced. The fruit of the wheat is golden yellow, but that of the tares is black. Today in Christianity, among so many real Christians, there are also some false Christians, Christians in name. At the beginning they look the same as Christians until they bring forth fruit. Then by their fruit people can discern that they are false Christians.
While the Lord Jesus is sowing Himself as the life seed, Satan is also sowing the tares. The farmers are not able to tell where the tares come from, but after the wheat has grown up, some tares are mysteriously among them. This typifies the devilish damage of God’s enemy. Among millions of Christians there are thousands of tares, false ones. In the first part of the fourth century, Constantine the Great mixed the church with the world. He brought thousands of false believers into Christianity, making it Christendom, no longer the church.
First, we see the evil spirits as the birds coming to snatch away the word of life. Then Satan has another way. This way is his adding in some false ones to damage the growth of the real wheat. The false Christians among the real Christians always restrict and damage the growth and development of the wheat.
Satan’s damage is also to change the nature of the small mustard, signifying the church in life, which is good for food supply, into the nature of a tree, signifying the big Christendom in confusion, which is good for lodging the evil ones, signified by the “birds” (vv. 31-32). The mustard plant is small, but Satan changed the nature of the mustard into a great tree. The mustard signifies the church in life, which is good for food supply, but today’s Christendom is a big organization, like a big tree. Instead of being good for food, it is good for lodging the evil ones, signified by the “birds.”
The church should be small in nature and in function, not big as Christendom is. We Christians who follow the Lord Jesus are relatively small in number, but Satan has made Christendom very large. This is a damage to the church. This is why in the recovery we do not like to have anything as a big façade.
We need to note that the three items above under Roman numeral I (the wayside, the rocks, and the thorns) frustrate the growth of the life seed in the believers and restrict the multiplication of Christ through His believers, whereas the two items above under Roman numeral II (the tares and the mustard seed becoming a great tree), on the one hand, bring in a mixture among the components of the church and, on the other hand, change the nature of the church and make the appearance of the church abnormal.
Today the appearance of Christianity is altogether abnormal. In the church life we do not have titles or assigned pastors as great speakers. The genuine church is not something great but is like the small mustard that produces food for the satisfaction of God and man. For the proper church life we need to have the fourth kind of heart, the good earth, for growing Christ, and we need to be small, not great. The Lord Jesus told His disciples that they were a little flock (Luke 12:32). We should be the little flock following the Lord (1 Pet. 5:2a; Acts 20:28). If we are not, we are abnormal. The church is little in number compared with the world. The church as the little flock is a little herb for the supply of life, not a big tree for the birds to lodge in, not a huge religion like Christendom.
Satan’s corruption of the church began with his leavening the initial church, typified by the two loaves of the wave offering, which was offered to God on the day of Pentecost (Lev. 23:15-17). Leviticus 23 says that on the day of Pentecost, God requested that His people offer two leavened loaves, not unleavened loaves. That indicates that from the first day the church was established, the church was already impure. This is confirmed by the sinful case of Ananias and Sapphira in deceiving God the Spirit (Acts 5:1-11) and the case of the murmuring concerning the overlooking of the daily dispensing to the widows (6:1).
Satan also corrupted the church by leavening the church in Corinth with the gross sin of fornication (1 Cor. 5:1-8).
Satan’s corrupting work is also by leavening the church with different teachings other than the teaching of the economy of God. Paul exhorted Timothy to remain at Ephesus to charge certain ones not to teach different things other than the economy of God (1 Tim. 1:3-4). This tells us that even in the early days among the churches different teachings were being taught. Different teachings create divisions. Because there are hundreds of different teachings today, there are also hundreds of different groups, different divisions. This is a kind of leavening to divide the Body of Christ.
Satan’s corruption is portrayed in Matthew 13:33, which speaks of the leavening of the entire three measures of meal (fine flour made of the grains of wheat) through a woman (the Catholic Church as the false prophetess Jezebel — Rev. 2:20). This means that the Catholic Church itself is a false prophetess.
Satan worked to leaven the early church with Judaism in Sabbath keeping (Col. 2:16); in circumcision practice (Acts 15:1-2; Gal. 6:15); in the so-called holy diet (Acts 11:2-3; Gal. 2:12-13); and in traditions (1:14). He also leavened the early church with Gnosticism (Col. 2:8) and asceticism (vv. 20-23). These “isms” were leaven by which the church was corrupted.
Satan also leavened the church with Catholicism in the papal system, hierarchy, heresies, idolatry, and pagan practices. The Catholic Church was fully formed in the sixth century when the papal system was established. There is also an established hierarchy in Catholicism with the pope as the head under whom are the cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops, and the priests. Catholicism is full of heretical teachings, idolatry, and pagan practices. They call Mary the mother of God and say that she has no sin. To worship Mary as the holy mother is heresy as well as idolatry. Catholicism also invented the holidays of Christmas and Easter, which are pagan in their origin and full of pagan practices. Christmas originated from European paganism. The name of Christ was attached to the birthday of the sun god, celebrated on December 25. In principle the celebration of Easter is the same. The Catholic cathedrals are full of idols, statues, and pictures, to which people pray. There is one Catholic cathedral in Manila with a statue of Jesus, and all the worshippers entering into the cathedral touch the feet of this statue. This shows the heresy and superstition of the Roman Catholic Church.
Satan also leavened the church with Protestantism in its hierarchy. The Protestant church has its ministers and pastors in a kind of religious organization with a hierarchy. Revelation 3:1 also reveals that the Protestant church is living in name but dead in actuality.
Protestantism is full of different teachings. The denominations are based upon their different teachings. The Southern Baptists stress baptism by immersion. Based upon that teaching, they set up a denomination to baptize people by immersion. The Presbyterians stress the presbytery, the ruling and managing of a so-called local church by a body of elders. Based upon that teaching, they formed the Presbyterian church. All the different denominations are founded upon their different teachings, and they have their traditions that they must keep.
Furthermore, today in the Protestant church there are some modernists, teaching people that the Bible is not inspired by God, that there are no miracles, that there are no angels, and that there is no Spirit. The modernists do not believe that Jesus is God or that He died to redeem us from our sins. They do not believe in the resurrection of Christ. Instead, they say that Christ sacrificed Himself merely as a martyr. Protestantism is also full of worldliness and divisions. This is why we cannot remain there. We do not want to be under that kind of leavening.
The church has also been leavened with nationalism and racialism. Today in this country there are still so-called black churches and white churches. The whites and the blacks do not meet together. Socialism with class distinctions is also prevalent in Christianity. Liberalism and politics are other forms of leaven in Christendom. This is Satan’s corruption, so in the recovery we cannot allow anything like this to exist.
Satan’s corruption is also seen in his leavening the church with the believers’ natural man and their flesh and its lust. This leaven is also the sin in their nature, the sins in their deeds, and all the evil things listed in Galatians 5:19-21. One of the evil things listed in Galatians is sects, or schools of opinion (see v. 20 and footnote 4, Recovery Version). Even in a little church of eleven or twelve meeting together, there can be a number of opinions as a leavening factor of corruption.
The enemy Satan’s leavening of the church is to corrupt the church in its nature and contents. Even the life element (the entire three measures of meal made of the grains produced by the wheat), of which the church is constituted, is leavened. This disease of the church is in its constituents. Such a disease of being corrupted by being leavened is incurable.
This chapter shows us the schemes of God’s enemy, Satan, with his frustration, damage, and corruption. We see his frustrating work in the human heart, his damaging work in adding false believers and in changing the church’s nature, and his corrupting work in leavening the whole content of Christianity. We must give up all these negative things so that we may be pure and be freed from all kinds of frustrations, all kinds of damage, and all kinds of corruption to grow Christ so that Christ may be multiplied among us and through us to enter into many others that they might be regenerated.
I hope that all the saints in the recovery could see clearly that we need to be freed from all the frustrations of Satan, from all the damage of the enemy, and from all the corruption of the devil. May the Lord be merciful to us. We are different from others, not because we like to be different but because we like to be purified and freed that we may grow Christ for His multiplication and for His constitution and building up of the Body of Christ by the transformation in life.
