A careful consideration of the teaching of our Lord in the Gospel by Matthew would show a dramatic change at the end of chapter 12 and the beginning of chapter 13. Up to this point the King has been presenting His credentials to the nation of Israel. But after careful examination of those claims by the leaders of the nation, He was deliberately rejected. They said His miracles were the work of Satan and not of the Son of God. He calls this the unpardonable sin and turns away from the nation as such. The unpardonable sin of Matthew 12:31, also called the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, is the national rejection of Jesus of Nazareth as the Jewish Messiah.
From this point on, His ministry changes. Instead of plain statement and teaching, He uses parable and metaphor. Those who are anxious to learn and know the truth will probe and inquire and come to understand. But the indifferent will be judicially blinded. This blinding is the condition of the nation of Israel until the present day. It is the subject of one of the New Testament mysteries in Romans 11.
Matthew 13 is a key passage in the interpretation of the New Testament. It should be studied carefully along with the seven feasts of Jehovah in Leviticus 23 and the seven churches of Asia in Revelation 2 and 3. These three passages have something in common in that they give a chronological outline of God’s purposes in relation to Israel, to the kingdom, and to the Church of the present era, respectively. A clear understanding of their teaching would be an education in itself in systematic theology.
The kingdom of God is one of the important themes of Holy Scripture, but the term “kingdom of heaven” is found only in the Gospel by Matthew, where it occurs twenty-six times. The kingdom is different from the Church, although often confused with it, and by many regarded as the same.
Matthew’s Gospel shows the difference very plainly. The kingdom is a much wider concept than the Church, and is found in the Old Testament, long before the Church came into being. The kingdom will continue until the end of time and into eternity, when God will be all in all. The Church in its outcalling and testimony is confined to the present era of grace.
Is there any difference between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven? The fact that some of the parables in Matthew are called parables of the kingdom of heaven, and the same parables are designated parables of the kingdom of God in Mark and Luke, would seem to indicate that the terms are interchangeable. Many Bible teachers emphasize this point. Without wishing to be dogmatic, I would point out that there are very few synonymous terms in the Word of God. It would appear that, in the overall picture, the kingdom of God is a wider term than the kingdom of heaven, and is universal in its scope.
The kingdom of heaven, as outlined in Matthew 13, suggests that the rejected King is absent from earth and is working out His purposes from heaven. The kingdom of God is both a spiritual and a material kingdom, and is composed of those who gladly and willingly bow to God’s authority and control, while the kingdom of heaven is intershot with revolt and sinister influences that seek to undermine and destroy God’s sovereignty and His universal dominion. But one day these infernal movements will be rooted out and the kingdom of heaven will merge into the kingdom of God.
The seven parables of Matthew 13 describe in a systematic way how these two movements work side by side, but will result in the ultimate triumph of God’s glorious purposes of grace for man and the whole universe. Perhaps this is the reason why the two terms, describing the kingdom at this period, overlap and run side by side. The kingdom of God reaches back into eternity past, and stretches forward into eternity to come, when the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our God and His Christ. But at the present time the King is in exile, rejected in the world His hands had made; but He reigns from His royal and priestly throne in heaven, and in the hearts of His loyal subjects on earth.
The seven parables of Matthew 13 are divided into two groups. The first four were spoken publicly to the multitude by the seaside; the last three were given privately to the disciples in the house. The first group describe how Satan is working to destroy the work of God. The second, given in the seclusion of the house, show how the operation of the purpose of God will ultimately triumph.