A Revival Resource Center
|
|
Articles and
Messages by G. Campbell-Morgan
- Parabolic
Illustrations: Matthew 15
In this fifteenth chapter
we find a parable, and a parabolic illustration. The parable is in
the eleventh verse, and our Lord’s explanation occurs in verses seventeen
to twenty. Then in connection with another incident in His ministry
we have a parabolic illustration in verse twenty-six.
It is necessary that
we understand the subject which He was illustrating, when He uttered
a parable. To do that we must go back to see the occasion upon which
our Lord used these words and this illustration.
There had come to Him
a deputation from Jerusalem. By this time He was approaching the end
of His third year of ministry. That third year culminated at Caesarea
Philippi, which account is in the next chapter. So He was approaching
the end of the central period of public ministry, so full of interest.
Hostility to Him on the part of the rulers, spiritual, moral, and
civil, which had manifested itself from the beginning, had grown with
the passing of the years.
- Parabolic
Illustrations: Matthew 16
"I will give unto
thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven." Again we can interpret
that figure of speech only according to the times. It was perfectly
familiar. That great order of scribes for a long time had looked upon
keys as the insignia of their office, as the interpreters of the moral
law. So He made use of the figure to show that the Church was not
only to be built on rock, and therefore invulnerable; not only to
be the attacking force against which the force of Hell should not
prevail; but that she should be in the world to enforce the laws,
in the sense of moral standards; to bind, to declare that which is
obligatory; to lose, to declare that what is voluntary. So in these
figures used by our Lord, rock, gates, and keys, eternal truths are
revealed concerning the Church which He is building.
Home
| Authors | Biographies
| Topics | Revivals
| Books/audio/CD
| Links | Translation
| Prayer
watch | Vision
& History | Revial
Seminars | Contacting
us
Copyright © 2003. Ensemble
Rebâtissons la Maison.
|