The book of Matthew has been mostly misunderstood throughout the history of the church. Many Christians think that the Gospels are not deep books, and that Matthew is merely one of these four Gospels. I would say, however, that Matthew, as the first book of the New Testament, is the most solemn, serious, and deep book because it reveals to us the kingdom of the heavens. We gave many messages on this subject in 1972 in Los Angeles which are contained in a book of fifty chapters entitled The Kingdom. I am concerned that many of you have not yet read this book. In 1977 we also had a Life-study of the entire book of Matthew and all these messages have been printed. We also have the Recovery Version of Matthew with all the notes to help us get into the riches of this book. In all these sources, I have pointed out strongly that the book of Matthew is a book on the kingdom of the heavens.
The kingdom of the heavens is used by God to stir us up to take care of our Christian exercise and responsibility after being saved. After a person is born, the exercise of his human life begins. For anyone to be a proper, normal person living on this earth, he has to be exercised at least eighteen years. Everyone under eighteen should be under the care and training of his parents. If a person is born in a royal family, he has to be very much exercised to be a king. A prince who will be a successor to the throne needs to be daily exercised in everything. As Christians we all have been born into a royal family. We all should desire to be kings and rulers in the millennium with our Lord Jesus (Rev. 20:4, 6), but are we exercised in everything? Matthew, a book on the kingdom of the heavens, is a book on Christian exercise for the believers to receive a reward in the coming kingdom age that they might be free from the coming punishment. The great Brethren teachers did not see this. Even Scofield’s reference Bible indicates strongly and incorrectly that the foolish virgins are not believers. This kind of interpretation avoids the fact of the coming punishment.
Some may feel that we should not use the word punishment, but discipline. Actually, however, punishment and discipline in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, are synonyms. When parents discipline their children, this means a kind of punishment. To discipline means to punish. Some children who do well in school are rewarded by their parents while others who do not are punished. The not giving of a reward is even a kind of discipline, a kind of punishment.
I cannot say what the millennium will be like, especially its heavenly part, which is the manifestation of the kingdom of the heavens, because I have not been there yet. But thank the Lord that when He was on this earth, He told His disciples all these solemn words, and under God’s sovereignty, all these words were written down and published in the book of Matthew. Today this wonderful book is in our hands, and the Lord has mercifully opened it up to us.
Especially in the Lord’s recovery, we have no excuse to say that we have not been warned to take care of the exercise of the Christian life. The Bible is a book full of solemn words for us to consider about our exercise in our Christian life. It is natural for human beings to be loose. I can testify personally that it is hard for me to commit a sin or to love the world, but it is spontaneously easy not to be watchful. Most of the days and hours have been spent without our being watchful. We live the Christian life without seriousness, and this is absolutely wrong. Anyone driving a car should always be watchful. If a driver is not watchful, he may kill himself or kill others. At the very least, the policeman may give him a ticket. The government is there to keep people from being so loose. In like manner, God’s government, His kingdom, is there to keep His children from being so loose.
If we were only to read John 3:16, we would only have the realization of how generous God is. He has a broadened heart, the span of which is from eternity past to eternity future. God’s heart is so broad that it embraces everyone. In John 3:16 God is very generous, but in Matthew it is different. He is a hard master who reaps where He does not sow and gathers where He does not scatter (Matt. 25:26). The Lord admitted that He was such a One. He will call a number of His slaves evil and slothful and cast these useless slaves into outer darkness, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth (25:26, 30). This is also the word of the Lord Jesus in the Bible in the very first book of the New Testament. We have to see the solemness here.
There were times when I was so busy in the publication work that I was laboring from early morning until late at night. As a result, I did not have much time to pray, and I regretted this. We have to realize that in our private Christian life not to pray is more serious than not to come to the meeting. If we neglect a watchful life of prayer, this is a great negligence. This will be a lacking that causes you a great loss in your Christian life. This happens because you stop being watchful. If you do not pray for an entire day, you can never be watchful in that day. Even if you never have a praying spirit toward the Lord for half an hour, in that half an hour you can never be watchful.
Again, we must realize that the book of Matthew is a solemn book. The beginning of the parable in chapter twenty-five says, “Then shall the kingdom of the heavens be likened to ten virgins...” (v. 1). This is a parable concerning the kingdom of the heavens in a solemn book that wakes you up to take care of your exercise in your Christian life. A ticket from a policeman results in a financial penalty, but this parable in Matthew 25:1-13 concerns our destiny for at least one thousand years. If we do not pay the fine, the price for a traffic violation on time, the cost keeps getting higher. But if we do not pay the price required to buy the extra portion of oil in this age, the price we will have to pay in the next age will be great, high, and costly. In the Gospel of Matthew there are portions warning us to be careful about our exercise in the Christian life.
The parable in 25:1-13 likens all the believers to virgins. In biblical times among the Jews virgins were very much separated from contacts with outside people. In the kingdom of the heavens, the believers are likened to virgins, not to wrestlers, boxers, or football, basketball, or baseball players. Virgins signify believers in the aspect of life (2 Cor. 11:2). We are chaste virgins bearing the Lord’s testimony in the dark age and going out of the world to meet the Lord.
The New Testament charges us and warns us with one heavy charge—that the Lord is coming. None of us knows the day or hour of His coming. If you do not believe in Him, you will go to the lake of fire. If you believe in Him, you escape eternal perdition in the lake of fire, but if you are not watchful in life you will receive some dispensational punishment. We had no choice regarding our physical birth. Some people may have thought that it would have been much better if they had never been born. But whether we were born or not was not up to us, but up to the Lord. Also, we have become Christians. We were predestinated, chosen, and called by the Lord. We have also been regenerated. We are Christians whether we like it or not, and our Lord is coming again whether we like it or not. What shall we do to meet Him? We must be prepared. We are virgins going out to meet the One who is coming to us as the most pleasant Person, as a Bridegroom. In this solemn book of Matthew He would not let us know when He would come (24:44; 25:13). His not letting us know means that we have to be watchful and always keep ourselves exercised.
We all are going out of the world to meet our Bridegroom bearing a lamp as a shining testimony. Our human spirit is the lamp of Jehovah (Prov. 20:27). This lamp should be bright and shining, so it needs oil. Oil in typology signifies the Spirit of God (Isa. 61:1; Heb. 1:9), and we need the Spirit as the burning oil. We are going out to meet Him, bearing a shining testimony, so we need the burning oil, the burning Spirit. With the lamp there is a vessel. The foolish ones have oil in their lamps, their spirits, but they do not have the extra portion of oil in their vessels, their souls. We should be in a situation of going out to meet Him and bearing His testimony. For this purpose we need more oil, more Spirit, so we have to buy the oil. This extra portion of oil could never be given to you as a gift. You could never get it freely. You need to buy the oil.