In the New Testament, the Lord often speaks in parables. The Lord’s New Testament speaking is not like the straightforward commands in the Old Testament, when God gave no room for imagination about His judgment. When Jesus was on the earth, not many people understood His words. Some even scoffed or were confused. We might wonder, why doesn’t the Lord speak plainly, but in parables?
By using a spiritual language, the Lord requires His listeners to have experiences that unlock His words. These listeners, then, are specific: those who are related to Him by life and by experience. That’s the secret of the New Testament. As believers — as saved ones — we are those who are related to the Lord in life. But this relationship is dynamic and organic. It requires us to grow and to be constituted, which can only happen by our continual experiences of Him. The more we experience the Lord, the more weighty in life we become — and the more our beings become spiritual. And just as how only spiritual men can discern spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:13), only when we have been constituted by spiritual experiences can spiritual language, like the parables, be opened up to us.
In Matthew 25, the Lord gave two parables that illustrate the weighty vessels He is looking for: the first about five prudent and five foolish virgins, and the second about three slaves who were given talents while the master went abroad. Within each story, there are prudent ones, and there are foolish and evil ones. Some are filled with oil, others are without. Some are gaining in the weighty silver of redemption, others have hidden their talents away. How are we able to understand these things? What is the Lord speaking specifically to us concerning our relationship with Him? We can’t understand these things unless we have a certain amount of constitution within our beings — unless we are weighty. In other words, we have to be the prudent virgins; we have to be the good and faithful slaves.
What makes the virgins and slaves foolish or prudent depends on whether or not they are filled and weighty, and whether they have a relationship with Him in life. The prudent virgins are prudent not because they’re morally better and remembered to fill their vessels. What makes them different from the foolish virgins is that they are those who are single and pure, willing to gain oil ahead of time, and who are awaiting their Bridegroom to come. Likewise, what differentiates the good and faithful slaves from the evil and slothful slave is that they are laboring with the master’s joy in view, with a heart for the master’s household possessions. It’s easy to say, “We love the Lord,” but not many of us prepare for His return, going beyond good sayings and actually paying the price of denying our soul life. Many believers know they should “serve” the Lord, but not many are faithful to exercise themselves so they can be twice as weighty to serve His church on the earth. If you want to serve the Lord, the Lord will call you to Himself with very clear direction: “You want to serve me? Pay the price to buy oil. Serve My possessions. This is how you’re prudent.” We are willing to go through a constitution process; we serve Him because we love our Lord and His house.
It is very important that today our earthen vessels are substantiated by a weighty reality. Without experiences, these parables are just stories that are not related to us, or metaphors that tell us some moral lesson. The church is not a place of charity for unrelated peoples. It is the house of God for His administration and His resting place. It is a place for serving Him and His possessions, His people. For this cause, He is seeking something of us that we must not miss: we must be those who hear and understand His heart, those who have gained weightiness in silver, who pay the price for more oil — today, not tomorrow. There is a house the Lord is coming back to, and when our beings are weighty, there is also the reward: the reality of our enjoyment of Him, a weighty relationship with the One we love, the entering into the wedding feast, and the joy of our master.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 10/27/2024, not reviewed by the speaker.)