CHRIST’S WORDS ARE FOR THE CHILDREN OF GOD
“Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (PSALM 119:11)
The gracious words of Christ are for the sons and daughters of grace, not for the Gentile nations whose chosen symbols are the lion, the eagle, the dragon and the bear!

So, the notion that the Bible is addressed to everybody has wrought confusion within and without the church. The effort to apply the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount to the unregenerate nations of the world is one example of this. Courts of law and the military powers of the earth are urged to follow the teachings of Christ, an obviously impossible thing for them to do. To quote the words of Christ as guides for policemen, judges and generals is to misunderstand those words completely and to reveal a total lack of understanding of the purposes of divine revelation.

Not only does God address His words of truth to those who are able to receive them, He actually conceals their meaning from those who are not. The parables of Christ were the exact opposite of the modern “illustration” which is meant to give light: the parables were “dark sayings” and Christ asserted He sometimes used them so that His disciples could understand and His enemies could not.

The natural man must know in order to believe; the spiritual man must believe in order to know!

A. W. Tozer