Understanding Spiritual Truth

We live in the information age. Thanks to modern communications technology, we’re swimming in a sea of data. Distance and time are no longer a barrier to the free travel of information, so we’re swamped by a tidal wave of facts.

You can turn on your television and have instant access through CNN to world events as they happen. You can sit in front of your personal computer and download the latest stock market quotes. You can get the box score of the Mets game on the west coast before it appears in your local paper, or the latest weather report for Rio de Janeiro. You can find out the best air fare to Florida, and book your own reservation.

In fact, there’s so much information out there that we’ve developed the ability to ignore most of it. There’s just too much to process, so we filter most of it out. It skims lightly over our minds without taking root. It doesn’t really make much of a difference in the way that we think or live.

There’s no evidence to suggest that the human race is changing for the better, in spite of the fact that we have all this information at our fingertips. The data really hasn’t made a difference.

But there’s one kind of information that the Bible says we ignore to our own peril. That is the spiritual truth that comes from God.

I want to explore with you today a passage from the teaching of Jesus in which he says some very troubling things about that. It’s found in Matthew 13. We read it earlier in the service, but I’d like to read it with you again.

Read Matthew 13:10-17.

Matthew chapter 13 is a chapter of parables: Jesus tells seven parables in this one chapter alone. Now you may be asking “What is a parable, anyway?” Very simply, a parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. A parable is a story about some familiar situation - perhaps a story about farming, or business, or cooking, or some aspect of family living - that communicates a nugget of truth about the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus was a master at telling parables. There are about 40 parables of Jesus recorded in the NT. Some of his parables are long and have lots of details; some are very short - just one or two sentences. But however long or short they are, they usually just have one important thing to tell us about spiritual matters.

Although he had spoken in parables before this, Matthew chapter 13 marks a real turning point in Jesus’ ministry. From this point on, whenever he speaks in public, he usually tells parables. A logical question is “Why?” In fact that’s the very question that the disciples asked him in verse 10: “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

The answer that Jesus gives in verse 11 is rather unsettling, to say the least! In Greek, it begins with a little word that means “because”. That doesn’t come out in the NIV, but it does in the KJV. When Jesus replies to the disciples, he isn’t just making a statement, he’s giving them a reason. He’s saying “I’m speaking to the people in parables because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.”

What is he saying? That spiritual knowledge isn’t for everybody? It’s only for the disciples? It’s exclusive? Jesus is trying to conceal the truth from the common people?

It’s important that we understand who was in the crowd listening to Jesus that day. If you go back to chapter 12, you’ll find that there’s a lot of animosity toward Jesus coming from the Pharisees.

Jesus and his disciples are walking through a grainfield on the Sabbath day, and the disciples were getting hungry, so they picked some grain and ate it. The Pharisees saw them do this, and they became very angry, because this violated their rules about what you could or couldn’t do on the Sabbath.

Then, Jesus went into their synagogue. There was a man there with a shrivelled hand. The Pharisees were spoiling for a fight, and they said “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” In other words, “You’d better not break our Sabbath rules by healing this guy today.” So what did Jesus do? He healed him anyway.

Then verse 14 tells us something very significant: “the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.” Isn’t that horrible? Here’s the Messiah, going around doing good, healing people, and the religious leaders want to eliminate him because he doesn’t follow their rules.

Then, down in verse 22, Jesus heals a demon-possessed man. The people were astonished and began saying “Could this be the Son of David, the Messiah?” But the Pharisees said “No, it is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons. This man Jesus is getting his power from Satan.”

Wow! That’s how hard their hearts were toward Jesus. They saw the good he did and they gave the credit to the devil. Jesus said “When you do that, you know what you’re doing? You’re blaspheming the Holy Spirit.”

Make no mistake about it: the Pharisees hated Jesus. They wanted to kill him. They were waiting for an opportune time to get rid of him. But in the meantime, they followed him around and tried to trip him up. Still later, in chapter 12, they asked him to give them a miraculous sign.

He said, “The only sign you’re going to get is the sign of Jonah. Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, before he came back from the grave, so it will be with the Son of Man. You guys are worse than pagan Gentiles. When Jonah preached to Nineveh, they repented, but when I preach to you, you just harden your hearts.”

So when we get to chapter 13, those were the “people” that Jesus was talking about here in verse 11. He was talking about the people who had rejected him. They couldn’t receive spiritual truth because they had hardened their hearts towards the Son of God. When Jesus told a parable, the spiritual truth just rolled right off their backs like water off a duck, because in their hearts they were so dead set against him.

Principle #1 - Spiritual truth about the kingdom of heaven can only be understood by those who have received the king.

The disciples had received the king. The Pharisees had not. They had rejected him. So they couldn’t understand spiritual truth.

Have you ever tried to explain your faith to a non-Christian?

Recently, a Christian woman was telling me that her relatives, who are not believers, were encouraging her to think about moving off Long Island. But she told them that she would find it very hard to leave her church family. And she could tell that her family just didn’t understand that answer. They couldn’t understand how being part of a local body of believers who worship Jesus Christ would matter so much to her.

Another Christian couple shared with me how their accountant just couldn’t understand why they would give so much of their money to the church. They weren’t getting any tax advantage from it, so why do it? He thought they were crazy.

I know of a Christian girl who told a non-Christian guy she had been seeing that they had to break up because she felt herself getting too emotionally involved with him, and he wasn’t a Christian. His response told her that he just didn’t understand.

Don’t expect people who haven’t received Jesus Christ to be able to understand spiritual truth. They can’t, because they don’t have the Spirit of God living within them.

1 Corinthians 2:14 The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

2 Corinthians 3:15-16 a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

If you were to spend several thousand dollars to buy a satellite dish to receive TV signals (which in my opinion would be about as sensible as jumping off a cliff), you would also have to purchase a black box called an unscrambler. You see, the Cable TV companies electronically scramble their signal to protect it from video pirates who have satellite dishes. To see their programs, you’d have to unscramble their signal.

Well, in a similar way, the Holy Spirit is the unscrambler of the spiritual signals that come from God. Not that God is like the Cable TV company trying to protect his proprietary information and keep it from us. It’s just that our sinful hearts are unable to receive spiritual truth unless he himself gives us the ability to. That’s one of the roles of the Holy Spirit in our lives. He comes to live in us the moment we receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and he tunes us in to God’s wavelength. He takes the veil away.

A while ago, we had a sign out on our signboard. It said “A little Christianity will inoculate you against the real thing.”

You know, there are a lot of people sitting in churches where the Bible is taught and the Gospel is preached, and that spiritual truth that they are getting week by week is just making no impression on their lives whatsoever. In fact, it’s making them harder.

And the reason is that they haven’t received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. It’s not that they are not religious; they are very religious. But the Pharisees were very religious too. In fact they were more religious than anybody else. And yet they had access to all the truth of the Hebrew Scriptures, and they sat under the teaching of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and it didn’t do them any good at all. Why?

Because in their hearts, they rejected Christ. They trusted in their religion, they trusted in their own goodness, their own accomplishments, their own record of faithfulness in attending the Temple services, their own observance of the strict laws of Judaism, and where did it get them? It got them lost. It got them hard. It got them cold.

And I’m not naive enough to believe that there might not be people like that in this church as well. People who come faithfully week by week, who sit under the ministry of the Word. But people who have never really come to grips with their need for Jesus Christ to be their Lord and Savior. They have a relationship with the church, but they don’t have a relationship with Christ.

If you only have a relationship with Lynbrook Baptist Church, you’re not a Christian. If you only have a relationship with Lynbrook Baptist Church, you’re not going to go to heaven when you die. You’ve got to have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

The Pharisees sat in the crowds and listened to Jesus. The Pharisees studied the Bible. The Pharisees went to the Temple services. But the Pharisees could not understand kingdom truth because they had not received the king.

Principle #2 - Spiritual truth is not static; it’s dynamic. If your heart is right with Christ, you’ll get more. If you’re heart is hard toward Christ, you’ll lose what you’ve got.

Matthew 13:12 Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.

That seems to be a rather unfair principle at first glance, doesn’t it? Sounds like Robin Hood in reverse. God is going to take from the poor and give to the rich. But when you think about it, this is a spiritual fact of life that the Bible repeats over and over again. We find it in the parable of Jesus about the talents.

The wise servant invested the five talents his master had given him and he earned five more. The lazy servant went and buried the one talent that his master had given him. At the end of the story, the master took the one talent away from the lazy servant and gave it to the wise servant, who already had ten.

Matthew 25:29 For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.

This is how this spiritual principle works: If you are earnestly desiring to follow Christ and to honor Him with your life, then God is going to give you more spiritual truth to help you grow. But if you are ignoring the truth he’s already given you, and living your life to please yourself, then you are going to lose what you’ve got. You are not only not going to grow, you’re going to deteriorate.

In the Christian life, nobody stands still. You’re either growing, or you’re falling farther and farther behind. Nobody is static. It all depends on what you’re doing with the truth you’ve got. If you are seeking to live in obedience to what God has shown you, then he’ll show you more. Your understanding will grow.

But if you’re living in disobedience to the truth that God has shown you, then you’ll begin to lose what spiritual understanding you already have. You don’t reach a certain level of spiritual maturity and then stay there. You don’t plateau in the Christian life. You either continue on and keep growing, or you begin to fall back.

In a way, spiritual truth is dangerous. It comes with strings attached. The strings are strings of obedience. When God gives you insight into the Scriptures, it’s for a reason. It’s not so that you can become a spiritual intellectual; it’s so that you can become a better disciple. And to do that, you have to have a heart of obedience.

Principle #3 - Spiritual truth produces one of two results - it either enlightens us or it blinds us.

The Pharisees had received lots of spiritual truth. They had studied the Hebrew Scriptures intensively. In many cases, they had memorized large sections of the OT. Yet this knowledge was not coupled with a humble spirit of obedience. They became proud and self-righteous. Their hearts became hard. And their spiritual understanding was darkened.

When Jesus came - the Messiah promised in the OT - not only did they not recognize him, they rejected him, and ultimately they killed him. That’s how blind they were.

In Acts 28, when Paul arrived at Rome, the first thing he did was to call together the Jews of that city. He spent a whole day, from morning til night, reasoning with them and trying to show them from Moses and the Prophets that Jesus was the Messiah.

And Luke tells us “Some were convinced by what he said, but others would not believe. They disagreed among themselves and began to leave after Paul had made this final statement: “The Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your forefathers when he said through Isaiah the prophet: ’ Go to this people and say, “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.” For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’

Those were the very words that Jesus quoted here in Matthew 13! Spiritual truth blinded the eyes, deafened the ears, and calloused the hearts of the Jews, because they wold not accept Jesus as their Messiah.

And spiritual truth can do the same to us today. It can blind us, if our hearts are closed, or it can enlighten us if our hearts are open.

So when you walk into church on Sunday, or when you open your Bible through the week, check your heart condition. Because it all comes down to where your heart is.