What prospect do you cherish in this life?

What prospect do you cherish in this life? I remember sometime back that I had the good fortune of having a glimpse of a snippet of a wedding video done for a well-to-do Myanmar couple that showed them walking towards a large house basking under the golden dawn! Well, many people cherish such a future, perhaps you too under the guise of financial independence as one old hymn writer described as “Golden Fancies and Golden Dreams”. But as Christians, we are described as Children of the Kingdom (Matt 13:38) sown into the world by our Lord Jesus in His parable of the Wheat and the Tares. The question naturally arises: what prospect do you cherish for the Kingdom of God? Granted that we were told to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matt 6:33) as well as having the promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church (Matt 16:18)’such thoughts would have at least risen in your consciousness. I think Jesus’s disciples then would have such thoughts, viz-a-viz: what does the future hold, given the increasing hostility that Jesus faced at that point in time as found in Matthew 13? If you were to look back at Chapter 12, you would have noticed that the Pharisees had taken the decision to destroy Jesus (see Matt 12:24) and in the face of incontrovertible manifestation of His divine power, the same religious leaders could not but declare that Jesus’s power stemmed from the Devil! It would seem then that the Parable of the Wheat and Tares seek to explain the source of the opposition as well as give implicit promises that the Kingdom will not be constrained by the presence of opposition in her pale because both the Children of the Kingdom and the Children of the Devil are allowed to mingle in the visible church by the Lord Jesus (see verse 30)! What is explicit though, with respect to the advances and of great consummation of the Kingdom of God is found in the subsequent two parables of the Mustard Seed (Matt 13:31,32) and the Leaven (Matt 13:33). The former speaks of the outward growth of Kingdom, with a diminutive beginning as represented by the Mustard seed into a big shrub with branches where birds can nest in, while the latter speaks of the underpinning of such growth in the form of inward growth of the Kingdom in the form of Leaven. Leaven as we understand is the dough that is left over from the previous day. This is used to ferment a new dough which develops into baked bread of large size.

Indeed as 21^st century Christians, we have much to be thankful for as our eyes have witnessed the promises being fulfilled in the spread of Christianity from a group of frightened fishermen to the point even the Roman Emperor professed to be a Christian! In fact, a recent publication by a non-Christian historian, entitled “From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity”, seeks to chronicle how the teaching of the Gospel on Sexuality eventually shaped the Roman society and laws governing marriage! Of course, our memory is perhaps fresher on what transpired in the great 16^th Century Protestant Reformation since we claim to be the descendants of that great event. The great 16^th Century Protestant Reformation has shaped the modern world we know today with the spread and recovery of the Christian Gospel from the villages of England to the cities of Scandinavia and then to the land of the strong and free in the persons of the Pilgrim Fathers in the 17^th Century. For example, without the Protestant Reformation, we would not have witnessed the spread of the true Gospel throughout the world as we know it today so we cannot but thank God and be encouraged to see the faithfulness of God in the promises that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church. This should urge us on for His Kingdom!

While not knowing history will constrain you as a child, what would be of far greater significance is whether you are on the same page with Jesus with regards to the prospect of His Kingdom in the years to come, in your life time. This is simply because, if you have no thought nor clue nor interest, then perhaps you are barking up the wrong tree at this point in your life as one who professes Christ. You know what I mean. C. S. Lewis once wrote that if you “aim at heaven and you will get Earth “thrown in”: aim at Earth and you will get neither”.

So what prospect do you cherish for the Kingdom of God this Sabbath morning? If the answer is that God’s Kingdom will advance from Strength to Strength as given in the three parables alluded to and that you have surrendered yourself to the Saviour in that you only enjoin yourself to His Agenda,  then I say God be praised! If not, perhaps you need to examine yourself whether you are the other seed in the parable of the Wheat and the Tares or not. Amen.