Sermon Transcript:

This morning, we continue working our way passage by passage through the Gospel of Matthew. As we hear and read these passages each week from the Bible, we have the benefit of knowing how the ministry of Jesus and the apostles will unfold. When we hear Jesus refer to His suffering, we listen to that in light of His resurrection. We hear His teaching having the benefit of the mature insights of Peter, James, and John and the teaching of the apostle Paul.

We must remember the apostles didn’t have that luxury. Neither had they received the gift of the Holy Spirit yet to bring understanding and remembrance to them. Yet, we see that like every good teacher, Jesus is already laying the foundation they need. He is teaching them to walk spiritually as disciples, before they must run their race as apostles. 

Sometimes, especially as new believers, we are tempted to compare ourselves to others and the devil will try to use that against us. Listen friends, don’t let the enemy twist your need to grow into guilt or discouragement. Even John, Peter, Andrew, and the other apostles were not ready instantly to fulfill the ministry Jesus had for them. Understanding, wisdom, maturity; these things take time. 

This sermon that you are hearing today took over 40 years to write. Everything I have learned since I came to Christ has prepared me to preach in this moment. Everything you have learned in yours has prepared you to hear it in a way that God will use to strengthen and encourage you that is leading to you being raised with Him in Glory. God is the perfect teacher. The Good Shepherd knows how to feed His sheep.

Back in chapter 10, Jesus calls the disciples to follow Him. In chapter 11 and 12, Jesus begins to instruct and prepare them. Now, in chapter 13, He is revealing to them the truths of the Kingdom that are hidden from those to whom it is not given. He is teaching in parables and giving them the keys to understanding them. Jesus doesn’t immediately send them out. First, He prepares them. He does the same with us. This is our main point today:

Jesus trains His disciples to understand and pass on the treasures of His Kingdom.

Now, after giving them several parables, Jesus asks them in verse 51,

51 “Have you understood all these things?”

“Have you understood all these things?” The word He uses has the sense of putting things together. Jesus is asking, have you put it all together? Do you grasp how all these things I have been showing you about the Kingdom connect?

Do you comprehend that the Word of the Kingdom will be received by some and rejected by others; that the Kingdom will be opposed by the devil, but that Christ will preserve His people and finally triumph; that although it begins small and often works quietly and unseen, it will grow until it accomplishes everything God intends; that its value surpasses everything this world could ever offer; and that at the end of the age, the King will separate the righteous from the wicked and bring His people into everlasting glory? 

Have you put all of that together? Do you understand what God is doing in this gospel of the Kingdom that I am preparing you to proclaim? 

Then, astonishingly,

They said to him, “Yes.”

Have you ever explained something to someone and you know they really are not listening as carefully as they should, but they are like, “yep, got it!”? They don’t even realize how much they still have to learn, but they are confident and unconcerned. That’s what is happening here. We know they don’t fully “get it” because in chapter 15, Jesus rebukes them for their lack of understanding. But they say “yes.”

What an amazing display of the patience and grace of Jesus Christ that He neither ridicules or rebukes them. He doesn’t laugh at their naivete. He is so wonderfully patient with us when we respond in faith. He knew what they could carry. He knew that when the Holy Spirit came, He would remind them of everything and give them the understanding they would need. 

They certainly do not understand everything, but it would be wrong to say they didn’t understand anything. The secrets of the Kingdom have been given to them. Jesus instructed them. They knew far more than the unbelieving crowds, and other than Judas, who was not saved, they would all continue to grow in knowledge and grace and God would use them to lay the foundation of the church.

He doesn’t rebuke them or correct them. Instead, He gives them another parable. This time the parable reveals an insight about the teachers of the Kingdom. Jesus says,

52 And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

He calls them scribes. That word should get our attention when applied to fishermen and tax collectors. A scribe was a teacher of the law. Particularly one who applied the law to life-circumstances. It was a position of honor and moral authority in the culture and scribes were well educated men. Imagine knowing someone qualified as a lawyer, university professor, financial advisor, and pastor all at once. That gives you some sense of the learning and respect associated with being a scribe.

The scribes were teachers, advisors, and experts on the scripture. In the gospels, the scribes are often opposed to Jesus, but here the term is being used positively. The implication is that disciples have been trained and have deep insight that they are expected to share. He is speaking to the apostles, but He does not limit this to them.

Jesus is talking about “every” scribe trained for the Kingdom. Jesus repeatedly encountered scribes trained in the old with no understanding of the new. Now He is producing a new kind of scribe, “trained for the Kingdom of heaven.” In Christ and His word, fisherman and laborers receive training and wisdom the scholars of the world do not have. 

Jesus tells Nicodemus that his learning is not enough. Unless one is born again, they cannot see the Kingdom of God. There can be no participation in the ministry of Christ unless we believe and are instructed in the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven. The word disciple literally means learner. To come to Jesus in faith is to become a student and we are to share what we learn. All who proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ are called to be scribes trained for the Kingdom of Heaven. 

These are not scribes of the Old Law. The Kingdom is not limited to Israel or Judea. It is the Kingdom of God. It is more than geography, it is the rule of God over His people through the Lordship of King Jesus. Speaking of Kingdoms, can be confusing because we tend, and the ancient Jews even more so, to think only in terms of earthly kingdoms.

I believe Jesus will rule over an earthly Kingdom in the Millenium, but the Kingdom of God is not confined to that. Preachers sometimes say we are laboring for the establishment of the Kingdom. We are not. The Kingdom is already established. The Kingdom arrived on earth when King Jesus arrived. His kingdom is His rule and though we wait for the consummation, we are already now citizens of that Kingdom, serving the King. 

What then are the scribes of this Kingdom to do? Our task is to bring the reality of God’s Kingdom to bear upon all of human life. We take from the treasure house of God’s revealed truth and proclaim what is eternally true, whether they recognize it or not. 

We want everyone to understand the realities of God’s Kingdom and what those realities mean for their lives. And we do this because we love them. We desire that their relationship to the Kingdom would result in blessing rather than judgment, that they would find life in Christ rather than perish apart from Him. We must therefore be trained in the truth of God’s word so that we may apply it skillfully.

We must proclaim the Kingdom of God and the necessity of every person to give up their sinful rebellion, surrender to His authority, pledge their loyalty, and live a life of service to the King of Heaven and earth. We are to do this with confidence that these things are true and that God has called us to proclaim them. There is no human being who does not need this message. There is no place in the universe that the glory of God must not be proclaimed. I like the way G. Campbell Morgan said it,

Take heart, my brethren, do not be constrained to believe that God's throne has trembled, or that the supremacy of heaven has ceased. Every man is in the grip of the Divine government and cannot escape it. The devil does not reign even in hell. God reigns there also. 

Because the Kingdom of the heavens abides, it has a message to every century, to all conditions of human life, and the responsibility of the disciples of the Kingdom is that of delivering that message.

Jesus describes the work of these New Covenant scribes with an illustration. The scribe who has become a disciple of the Kingdom and instructed in its truths is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom treasures that are new and old. Jesus often uses property owners in His illustrations, and they are often presented as those who distribute wealth. Why would a homeowner do this?

Life in ancient Israel was not as individualistic as it is now. Many family members and servants would live with and depend upon the head of a family to provide and care for them. The picture Jesus gives us is not someone showing off what they have to be admired, but of a wealthy property owner ensuring that the needs of everyone in their household are met. 

His resources would be dispensed as necessary to those who had a need and to whom he was bound. His storeroom would include both old and new treasures, either of which were at his disposal to use as needed.

Jesus is saying that those who have been trained, like these disciples to whom He has been explaining the parables of the Kingdom, are to use all the treasure they have accumulated through this wisdom to serve others.

The disciples did not understand the Kingdom and then become followers. Jesus called them, revealed the mysteries of the Kingdom to them, and then gave them understanding. They have been trained by the Master, and now they possess treasures they did not have before. 

But these treasures were not given to them merely for themselves. Jesus says that one who has now been trained for the Kingdom brings those treasures out of his storehouse. Our faith is not one where only the elite have access to the mysteries. The more we understand, the more responsibility we have to share with others. And so, the scribe of the Kingdom…

brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

When He says “new” and “old” Jesus is not speaking about two different things. He speaks of one thing that consists of that which is both new and old. If we are to understand the Kingdom rightly, we must wrap our minds around this important point. 

The kingdom is not replacing something old with something new as if the old is discarded. Neither, however, is the Kingdom that comes with Christ the same as that which has been. Something new has come. We see this tension several places in the New Testament, for example listen to what John says in 1 John 2:7–8,

7 Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. 8 At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

Everything that we see unfolding in Matthew is new and everything is old. The principle is old, the realization is new. The root is old, the fruit is new. The Kingdom of Heaven is in one sense a continuation of the work of God in the Old Covenant and yet it is a distinct work, it is a New Covenant. What was, still is, but is transformed through the person and work of Jesus Christ. New things which contradict old things are false; and the old thing which has nothing new in it, lacks the transforming Spirit and is dead.

Do you understand all these things? Have you put all this together? :-)

First, let’s consider what is old. From the beginning, Scripture has declared the sovereignty of God. He made the heavens and the earth. He rules over everything He has made, and from the earliest pages of Scripture He has been unfolding His purpose to establish His King and bring all things under His rule. What is new is that now the King has come. The promises are being fulfilled. The mysteries once hidden are being revealed. Jesus has taught His disciples to understand these things, and now they are to bring these treasures out and make them known.

We live in a world that goes about its business largely without reckoning with any of this. People make their plans, pursue their ambitions, build their lives, and imagine that the things they can see are the things that are ultimately real. But God is sovereign. He has established His King as promised. Psalm 2 says the nations rage and the people plot in vain, for God has set His king on Mt. Zion and the nations shall be His inheritance.

His Kingdom has dawned and it will triumph. All rebellion will be crushed and faithfulness rewarded. Jesus has opened our eyes to understand these realities, and they are not treasures we are permitted to keep to ourselves.

It is not new that righteousness is a necessity. Apart from righteousness, there is no fellowship with God. The wages of sin is death. We can redefine words and shape culture to make sinners more comfortable, but in the end we will all stand before a holy God and if we have no righteousness, we will suffer eternal punishment. Men scoff at sins and are offended when they are confronted with them, but without righteousness we will not see the Lord. One of the first things we read in our Bible is that God casts the sinners out of His presence and pronounces a curse on them.

It is an old truth that human beings are by nature sinners. Sin is not something outside of us that stains us, like paint or oil. It is something that comes from within our own hearts and spews out of us, like vomit. For all our science and supposed sophistication, human beings today have the same sinful desires, the same fleshly passions, the same intellectual arrogance that have beset our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and all the way back to Adam.

But it is not only the judgments and curses that are old. The promise of the New Covenant and the regenerating grace of God is older even than Moses and the Law of Israel. When sin enters the world, not only does God pronounce a curse, He also gives a promise. He promises a savior that will destroy the enemy. In Genesis 3:15, speaking to the serpent, God says,

15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

This is the first glimpse of the gospel and the first promise of Jesus Christ. The Savior would be human, descended from Eve. He will destroy the devil, though He would be wounded in the process. This promise was not simply a prediction. It was not just a word in the sense of sounds in the air or scribbles on a page just waiting to be fulfilled.

This is the word of God. It is alive and active. This ancient word, this promise from the dawn of human history, was bearing fruit and unfolding throughout the centuries. This redemptive promise came to Abraham, revealing God would create a great nation. It came to David, revealing God would provide a great King. It came to the prophets, revealing God would redeem His people through a suffering Deliverer and bring blessing to both Jews and Gentiles. 

These are old treasures. The sovereign rule of God, the necessity of righteousness, the judgment of sin, and the promise of salvation through a coming Redeemer were part of the story from the beginning. We are to bring out these old things. But also the new.

Imagine walking through a vast storage room in the dark with only a small candle. You can make out the shapes and contours of what is there, but you cannot see them clearly. That is a little like reading the Old Testament before we had the New. It was not darkness. There was light, and the great contours of God’s redemptive plan could be seen. Then Jesus comes. It is like someone turning on the lights. Suddenly you can see what was there all along, but now with a clarity that was impossible before. That is the way the New Testament illuminates the Old.

These themes remain, but they are transformed when we look at them through the light of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. They are transformed because Jesus not only reveals the mysteries, He is the fulfillment of them, making all things new.

It is not a new revelation that God is sovereign, but in Christ we see more clearly the wonder of who this sovereign God is. The God who rules heaven and earth is revealed to believers as our Father, who through His Son adopts us into His own family. This does not diminish His sovereignty; it reveals His sovereign rule as the loving authority of a Father over His children.

We should not reduce the fatherhood of God to sentimentality. A good father does more than show tenderness and compassion. He uses his authority and strength in love for the good of his children. In our Father, power and love, authority and compassion, are perfectly united.

He is our source and creator, He is our judge to whom we are accountable, He is our protector and provider, and He is our lawgiver and His law is a law of love. He does not command us merely out of His power, but He commands what is best. His law is given in love for us, and we keep it through our love for Him. 1 John 5:3 says,

3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.

Jesus is Himself the proof that God’s sovereignty is not only working all things infallibly for His glory, but for our good. In Christ the providence of God is shown to be the greatest comfort for every believer. Romans 8:28,

28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

If we are in Christ, God is not against us, He is for us. We know every experience, no matter how difficult, is shaping us and preparing us for unimaginable glory. Many things in the world may kill us, but nothing in the world can harm us. That is why James 1:2–4 says,

2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

The necessity of righteousness is old. This is the great problem of the Law. We are sinners. Our best works are filthy rags before God. This was the great promise, that God would write His law in our heart. That we would be born again, washed clean, and taught by God. But it is not until Jesus comes that we see clearly that God will Himself provide the righteousness that He requires. Speaking of Jesus, 2 Corinthians 5:21 says,

21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This is the love of God toward us that is revealed in Jesus Christ. This is the good news of Jesus Christ. We have all sinned against a holy God. We have broken His Law and deserve His judgment, and there is no righteousness in us that can make us right with Him. But God sent His Son. Jesus Christ lived the righteous life that we have failed to live, and then He went to the cross in the place of sinners. He bore our guilt. He suffered the judgment that our sins deserve. He died and was buried, and on the third day He rose from the grave, victorious over sin and death.

And now this risen King offers salvation freely to sinners. Turn from your sin and come to Christ. Stop trusting in your own righteousness, your religion, your good works, or anything else you think might make you acceptable to God. Repent and believe the gospel. Trust in Jesus Christ. Everyone who comes to Him in faith is forgiven, declared righteous before God, and given eternal life.

Come to Christ and He will transform you and complete the work God has begun in you until you are made to be like Him. Believer, there has never been a moment in all of history that His eye has not been on you, watching over you. There has never been a moment since creation that He has not been working toward the redemption of His children. Ephesians 1:3–4 says,

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. 

The judgment of sin is old. From the moment God pronounced the curse in Eden, sinners have lived under the sentence of death. But in Christ we see something that had only been pictured in sacrifices and shadows: God Himself provides the sacrifice and the judgment falls upon the substitute. Jesus bears the curse for His people. At the cross, the righteous judgment of God against sin and the saving love of God toward sinners meet in the person of Jesus Christ.

The promise of a Redeemer is old. God promised Him in Eden, unfolded that promise through Abraham and David, and revealed Him through the prophets. 1 Peter 1:12 says,

12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. 

What a blessed people we are! What they knew by promise, we now know by name. Jesus Christ has come. The promised Redeemer has died, risen, ascended to His throne, and reigns, and He will come again.

Let us understand the old and rejoice in how through Jesus Christ it has been made new. The King has come. The mysteries have been revealed. The New Covenant has been inaugurated and the Spirit has been poured out. The nations are being gathered and Christ is building His church. Death has been conquered. Christ is risen. Christ reigns. We have been united to Him and through Him we have access to the Father. The firstfruits of the new creation have already appeared. And this same King is coming again, and when He comes, we shall be raised with Him in glory.

The disciples were at the feet of the one who would accomplish all this. No wonder Jesus tells them in Matthew 13:16–17,

16 …blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. 17 For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

How much more for us now after He has risen! But it gets even better than this. The King has come, but He is coming again in power. We have been raised with Christ spiritually, but soon these bodies will be raised incorruptible. We have already been made new, but one day He will complete the good work He began in us. We have been delivered from the penalty of sin, we are being delivered from its power now, and one day we will be delivered even from its presence.

Brothers and sisters, let’s leave here today setting our minds on these things and living in light of them. I will finish with these encouraging words from Revelation 21:5–7.

5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. 7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.

These are the treasures Christ has entrusted to us. Let us meditate on them. Let us grow in our knowledge of them so that we may be scribes trained for the Kingdom of God, workmen approved, rightly handling the word of truth. And let us remember that these treasures were not given to us merely to possess, but to bring out and give to others. Let us proclaim this glorious Savior and His glorious Kingdom.