Matthew 13 is chock full of parables that start with the words, “The kingdom of God is like …”

In the OT, the phrase “kingdom of God” is, an eschatological concept that first appears in the prophets. Eschatology refers to a future world in which all human hopes will be fulfilled according to God’s purposes.
Micah (4.1-4) describes it attractively; all peoples shall stream to it, and

In days to come
the mountain of the Lord’s house

shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised up above the hills.

Peoples shall stream to it,
and many nations shall come  

they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more;

but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid …

Jesus asks the disciples “Have you understood all this?” and they say “Yes!” I wonder what they mean? Is it “Yes!” to Micah’s image, which I presume they knew; or yes to the string of parables laid out for them like a necklace? How do you see it? Do you say “Yes!” that readily? What do you respond to?

Jesus’ response, his punch line if you will, is telling. “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” The old treasure, the Scribe’s treasure, was the “Law and the Prophets,” in which they were comprehensively schooled. The Scribes were the guardians as it were, and significantly they were guardians of social cohesion.

Jesus indicates that the old and the new belong together; the new being that which Jesus has laid before his disciples in his life, teaching, and works. In the language of the old dispensation, the disciples are to be the Scribes of an enlarged treasure that contains the old and the new, strongly indicating that the new Scribes will be agents not just of personal change, but also of social change. “A new heaven and a new earth.”

Rev Doug Bannerman