What is the Kingdom of Heaven? The expression "Kingdom of Heaven" which is found 33 times and only in the Gospel of Matthew, means the same as "the Kingdom of God." Matthew preferred "Kingdom of Heaven" probably out of respect for the Jews hesitancy to use God’s name.

The Bible teaches that the sovereign reign of God is past, present, and future. The eternal God has always been King, whether or not people recognize Him as Ruler. Jesus Christ came to open the way to the kingdom through His life, death and resurrection. Thus He declared that the kingdom was present in Him, but its consummation is yet future.

The kingdom was an integral element of Jesus’ teachings, and He said that entering it was more important than anything. While some Christians believe that the kingdom of heaven is a different entity than the kingdom of God, many other believe that they are essentially the same. The difference in terminology arises because Matthew used the former while all other Gospel writers used the latter title.

The kingdom involves God’s sovereign rule over all His created order, but with Jesus we find a new emphasis about this kingdom. His primary focus was on God’s redemptive work, and He taught that the kingdom is the realm where God’s redemptive will is known and experienced. People are being saved and are entering the kingdom even now, and they will continue to do so until Jesus returns. In often unseen but powerful ways, God is moving to extend His rule over people’s lives by adding them to the kingdom through salvation.

We do not build the Kingdom of God; only God can do that. We can enter the kingdom by acknowledging the lordship of Jesus Christ. We can bear witness to the reality of the kingdom, and thus seek to extend the kingdom. We can live our earthly lives in light of the eternal kingdom. We can give priority to the things of the kingdom. We can pray for the coming of the kingdom.

Is the kingdom a present reality or is it future? The answer is yes! Scripture makes clear that Jesus inaugurated the kingdom while He was on earth, that it is a present reality, and that it has future aspects. God’s powerful activity in saving people and accomplishing His purpose is happening now, but the kingdom has not yet fully come. When Jesus returns and Satan and sin are defeated, then we will see the fulfillment of God’s kingdom.

Summing this all up, we may say that those who exercise faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ and surrender their lives to Him become citizens of God’s kingdom immediately. In this present age, many will not accept Him as Savior and Lord. When Christ returns, the Christian’s salvation will be consummated; for unbelievers, a terrible judgment awaits.

In Vs. 31 Jesus likened the kingdom to a mustard seed and in vs. 33 to yeast. Both of these analogies emphasize that the kingdom will experience great growth despite being very small at the outset. The mustard was most likely the common variety that grew l0 to 12 feet tall. That is quite impressive given that the mustard seed was the smallest of all seeds planted in Israel at that time. There are smaller seeds (tobacco seeds), but in the cultivated gardens of Israel mustard seeds were the smallest and the plants produced were the largest plants in the Palestinian gardens; so large that even the birds can perch in its limbs. They liked the shelter of the limbs, and they liked to eat the black seed.

In this parable you will notice that five symbols are used. There is the sower again, and the field in which he sowed, and the seed that is sown, which in this case is mustard seed, and there is the tree which grows from it, and the birds that make their nest in its branches. As with the other parables Jesus intends that we understand what these symbols mean in terms of what has been happening in the world since that day. So we will look at it with that in mind.

One of the basic laws in reading the Bible is that Scripture never uses a symbol in two conflicting ways; it uses them consistently through out. This is very important for you to know. Learn how Scriptures uses a symbol and then employ it the same way wherever it appears. Then you will come out with a clear understanding of what the Scripture is teaching.

Our Lord employed here a symbol, which he expected these people to understand. And if we can put ourselves back in their place, we will not have any trouble either. Mustard is a peculiar kind of seed. It has an unusual quality and this is what our Lord wanted them to catch. What do you think was the first thing these disciples thought of when they heard this symbol employed? I think it was very much like what we would think. Mustard has the quality of pungency. It is biting, irritating, disturbing, and this is what our Lord means.

When I was a boy growing up in Kaneyville, south of Seminole, Ok., we lived 10 miles from the nearest doctor. When we got sick we couldn’t call a doctor. There wasn’t even a drug store in our town. We had to rely upon what we called "home remedies." We had a book that contained all the remedies for any illness we might contact. If we got a cough or pneumonia or chest congestion there was a standard remedy to apply. We used what we called "mustard plaster." It is a goody mixture of mustard and water smeared on a cloth and then placed right on the chest. After it has been there about five minutes you can feel it begin to burn and you start itching and squirming. The contest is to see which will wear out first, the mustard plaster or you. You are supposed to holed it there until you get just as red as a berry. I don’t think it ever cured anything, but it made you forget what was wrong!

This is the character of mustard and these people knew that. So our Lord is us9ing a very apt symbol by which He indicates that the message of the kingdom of God is intended to be arousing, irritating, disturbing, among men. Turn it loose, and it will get a whole community excited, stirred up, either negatively or positively, as we see it working so beautifully today.

Our Lord used the smallest of seed, evidently stressing the apparent insignificance of the gospel. It does not look like much. It does not sound like much. Yet proclaim, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved." That does not sound very impressive to many people. It is so simple that you can teach it to children and to idiots and morons. Even they can understand "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." So the world is not very excited about it, or very impressed with it. The world does not regard it as a tremendous, earth-shaking philosophy. It is insignificant, it is despised. But let someone actually believe it, and see what happens. Let them really trust Christ and invite Him into their life and it is the most transforming, the most revolutionary thing that can occur to them. It is the beginning of a radical change in all their life.

An old song says, "Little is much when God is in it." The parable of the mustard seed teaches us that God’s love in the world begins in small ways, but it grows to cover the world. This is Jesus emphasis with the mustard seed.

In the second parable Jesus compared the kingdom of heaven with yeast or leaven. My mother used to save a piece of fermented dough from her last baking; she called it "starter." When she began to bake more bread, she took and mixed the fermented dough into a large amount of flour. Our parable says, the woman has "three measures of meal." Three measures was 40-50 pounds. That much meal or flour was a large amount, enough to feed a family for several days. Or the amount might have been what a large family required. Could Jesus have been thinking of His home and Mary's providing for her large family?

When the woman put the yeast into the flour, it worked all through the dough. The yeast permeated the flour that became dough, even such a large amount as 40-50 pounds. God’s kingdom is dynamic, never static. This parable teaches that just as the introduction of a little yeast into bread dough changes the whole dough, so Christ transforms the whole of our lives.

Today not every lost person is accepting Christ. Not every Christians is growing and victorious. Not every church is on fire for God. Not every nation is becoming more Christ like. Yet God’s kingdom is always victorious and growing. Somewhere lost people are coming to Christ. Some Christians are growing. Some churches are on fire. Some nations are being permeated with the Gospel. God’s kingdom is a present reality in the world. God is energizing it and it is growing; nothing can stop Him from accomplishing His purposes in the world. The parables of the mustard seed and the yeast teach the kingdom’s growth.

Jesus was the greatest Prophet, proclaiming God’s greatest message of the kingdom of heaven and inviting people to be part of it by placing their faith in Him and by following Him faithfully. As in the case of the mustard "tree", many will find shelter and nurture in God’s kingdom. As in the case of the "yeast", the kingdom slowly but surely will work until God transforms individuals and nations into Christ likeness.

These next two parables were spoken to the disciples after Jesus left the boat and went back into the house. After interpreting the parable of the weeds to His disciples in private, Jesus gave them a pair of brief analogies that taught basically the same truth. He depicted the kingdom as a treasure and a merchant. In so doing, He wanted to impress upon them the incomparable worth of being a kingdom citizen. We show our acceptance or rejection of God’s kingdom by our attitude and relationship to Jesus.

Once again Jesus began the parables with "the kingdom of heaven is like—" Treasure hid in a field was not uncommon in the time of Jesus. People often hid their valuables in a hole in the ground. Some unknown person had buried this treasure. We are not told who or why.

A man, probably a workman, was plowing a field and found the treasure by chance—since nothing is indicated about him looking for treasure. The fact that he had to buy the field show that he was not on his own property. When he found the treasure, he re-hid it--apparently in the same place where he had found it. We are not told why he didn’t report the discovery to the owner of the land, try to locate who buried it, take it to some other place, or why he left it where he would have to use all his resources to buy the field to have the treasure. Apparently Jesus’ original hearers were aware of the laws and customs of that day. Jewish law dictated that anything found in goods or money became the finder’s property. We kids must have known of that law when we quoted "finders keepers, losers weepers."

We should remember that Jesus’ did not always depict good people. In His parables Jesus did not always use people as examples of how to act but as a part of a story that makes a point. We neither justify the man’s behavior nor imitate it. This is simply part of the story line that helps to make sense of the plot.

We should not criticize the man because he hid the treasurer, nor for selling all he had to buy it. He was willing to give up everything he had to gain the treasure. Jesus was not commenting on his character or ethics; He was simply crafting the story in an interesting way. His purpose was to in an interesting way. His purpose was to show the joy of finding the kingdom through exercising faith in the king.

The message is he same in the story of the pearls. Pearls were highly valued in the ancient world, and a fine pearl could be soled for enough to provide a comfortable living. They could e worth as much as $400,000 for a single pearl. The merchant was not a local retailer but rather one skilled in trade. Such merchants would go to Persia and even to India seeking pearls.

Imagine the picture in the hearers’ minds of a pearl so large and costly that a businessman would sell all he had to acquire it! Such is the value of the kingdom—it is worth more than any treasure or pearl on earth. It is worth everything we are or have to be a part of it. If the Christian life is worth anything, it is worth everything. In the parable of the treasure, the man stumbled on his find. He found it unexpectedly. In the pearl of great price, the merchant looked diligently until he found his prized pearl. Only the kingdom is worth everything because only the kingdom is eternal. We are part of something lasting.

Notice that all the parables we have studied in this lesson focus on the paradox of insignificant or hidden beginnings and a triumphant ending. Jesus’ ministry with His disciples began in just the same way. But what began in a seemingly insignificant way as far as the world is concerned will grow on a grand scale. When God’s visible kingdom breaks in at the return of Christ, there will be nothing small or insignificant about it.

Jesus had shown that His kingdom is not static but is growing and is worth everything. His tone must have become very grave as he explained that the kingdom involves the judgment of both the saved and the lost.

The net as a large dragnet with weights on the bottom so that it could be dragged along the bottom. The purpose was to trap all the fish in the area through which the net was pulled. Because I had been sick all day while fishing in the gulf, the next day the owner of the boat put me off on an offshore oil well near one of the three mouths of the Mississippi River. I saw the shrimp boats come by with huge dragnets suspended on poles from either side of the rear of the boat. When they did this they gathered of every kind. In the parable they separated the fish. The good fish were placed in baskets. The bad fish were discarded. These fish were unfit to eat. The Jews ate only fish with scales and fins.

This is the only one of the last six parables that Jesus explained. He said that the separation of the good fish from the bad fish would take place at the end of the world. The instrument of this judgment will be the angels. They shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just or righteous. The wicked shall then be cast into the furnace of fire. The words wailing and gnashing of teeth show that Jesus was referring to hell.

This is not to deny that there are some unregenerate people who are church members; however, it is to stress that the judgment will include all people. This judgment will be a reality, and so will the eternal punishment of the wicked. Thus how one responds to the kingdom is of great significance. Refusing to enter the kingdom is rejecting the only One who can save from sin and bring eternal life. This parable says nothing about the heavenly life to those who enter the kingdom; but other passages do. The emphasis here is on warning of the ultimate consequences of one’s response to the kingdom of heaven.

This parable and the parable of the tares show that the kingdom that was revealed in Jesus’ first coming was primarily for salvation, but the future aspect of salvation will include judgment. God’s purpose is to save, but judgment is inevitable on those who reject salvation.

Remember, that the day is coming, maybe sooner than later, when the King will return in His glory. Thus the parable of the net is this: (l.) Judgment is coming. (2.) The righteous shall be separated form the wicked. (3.) The wicked shall be sent to hell. This gruesome destiny is identified in Rev. 20:15 as the lake of fire, the place of eternal punishment that all unrighteous people will experience.