The Parables of Jesus: Introduction

ANNNOUNCEMENTS

Mission SD 2021

Rummage Sale

Coffee Bar on Sunday

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Lord, here we go again!

Pray.

Think myself empty.

Read myself full.

Write myself clear.

Pray myself haught.

Be myself.

Forget myself.

Lord, let this message be a beacon for you. Let me be forgotten and invisible. Let them see and know you, only you. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Psalm 19:14

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The word Gospel means “good news”. It’s pretty important to understand that. The Bible is not a book that tells us what we have to do to earn salvation, it is a book that tells us what God did to earn our salvation. What he did was send Jesus. Jesus did for us what we could never do for ourselves and he paid for what we had done in his body on the cross. God created human beings and intended for them to be ruling creatures. We were supposed to be under God but over everything else. We were supposed to rule over creation under the guidance and authority of God’s Word and to function as conduits for all the blessings of heaven. That’s how it was supposed to be, but unfortunately, the Bible tells the story of how our first parents, Adam and Eve, fell into sin by choosing to rebel against God’s Word in order to become autonomous ruling creatures. Basically, they wanted to be gods unto themselves, deciding good and evil. From that point on, humanity has been on a downward spiral moving further and further away from God and our original design and glory. The heart of the Gospel is the Good News that Jesus has come as God in the flesh and has obeyed God perfectly and has therefore won the right to all the blessings God originally intended to give to men and women. Furthermore, through his sacrificial death on the cross, he has paid the debt that we owed to God for disobeying his commands. There is therefore no need anymore for us to hide from God. In Jesus, we can come home and we can be restored. The climax of the Gospel is the great news that he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven where he now intercedes on our behalf. He gives the Holy Spirit to all his people and he slowly but surely, changes our hearts, reforms our desires and teaches us how to be the children of God we were always intended to be. For now, Jesus remains in heaven, changing the world one person at a time, but one day he will return and judge the world in righteousness. He will remove from this world all sin and all causes of sin and he will restore the cosmos to a state of peace, prosperity and flourishing and all those who have received him as their Lord and Savior will participate in his rule and enjoy his goodness forever.

The gospel is the good news that God, the loving Creator, sovereign King, and holy Judge of all, has looked upon men and women wonderfully and uniquely made in His image who have rebelled against Him, are separated from Him, and deserve death before Him, and He has sent His Son, Jesus, God in the flesh, the long-awaited King, to live a perfect and powerful life, to die a sacrificial and substitutionary death, and to rise from the grave in victory over sin, Satan, and death. The gospel is a summons from God for all people in all nations to repent and believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, turning from all idols to declare allegiance to Jesus alone as King and trust in Jesus alone as Lord. All who turn from Jesus will experience everlasting, horrifying suffering in hell, while all who trust in Jesus will experience everlasting, satisfying communion with God in heaven. (Secret Church 2020, David Platt, Radical.net)

For now, Jesus remains in heaven, changing the world one person at a time, but one day he will return and judge the world in righteousness. He will remove from this world all sin and all causes of sin and he will restore the cosmos to a state of peace, prosperity and flourishing and all those who have received him as their Lord and Savior will participate in his rule and enjoy his goodness forever.

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PRAY

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EACH WEEK: A parable is a simple story that explains a spiritual truth.

Modern Day Parable

First, What is a parable?

What is a parable? “Parable: usually a short fictitious story that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle.” (Merriam Webster)

The source definition of the word “parable” means a placement side by side for the purpose of comparison.

https://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/parables-of-jesus/

A Parable is a brief, to the point, didactic story, which illustrates one or more instructive lessons or moral principles.

A Parable is a type of analogy.

The word Parable comes from the Greek παραβολή (parabolē), meaning "comparison, illustration, analogy." It was the name given by Greek rhetoricians to an illustration in the form of a succinct fictional narrative. It sketches a setting, describes an action, and shows the results. The defining characteristics of the Parable are the use of metaphorical language and the teaching suggesting how a person should behave or what he should believe, essentially providing guidance for proper conduct in one's life.

https://www.conformingtojesus.com/charts-maps/en/parables_of_jesus_chart.htm

How many, as many as 46 that Jesus spoke

Three Types of Parables Jesus uses

1. Didactic

Didactic- lessons of teaching; designed or intended to teach

b: intended to convey instruction and information as well as pleasure and entertainment didactic poetry

2: making moral observations

2. Evangelical

emphasizing salvation by faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ through personal conversion, the authority of Scripture, and the importance of preaching as contrasted with ritual

3. Prophetic & Judicial

foretelling events

The three types of parables — ‘didactic’, ‘evangelical’, and, ‘prophetic and judicial’ — they address such topics as: Kingdom, Service, Prayer, Humility, Love of Neighbor, God’s concern for the lost, Gratitude of the redeemed, Preparedness for Christ’s return, Judgement on Israel, Judgement, and Judgment within the kingdom.

Who is he speaking to? Those who have ears to hear.

The closer he got to Jerusalem, the more pointed they parables are and the more serious the implications

Purpose of Jesus’ Parables

1. Reveal the surprise of the kingdom of God.

We’ll see in just a little bit that the people expected a ruler with an iron fist to come take the kingdom back by force.

2. Introduce God’s upside-down kingdom.

It didn’t make sense. The lawyers (Pharisees & Saducees) were trying to rationalize their place but it was the meek that would be the heirs

3. Indicate that God’s kingdom requires a decision.

A decision had to be made to either follow or turn away. There was no middle ground.

(E1) Explainer stories.

Why did Jesus speak in parables?

To introduce us to the way he views the world. The new value system of the kingdom of God. (E1)

How he thinks about himself and what he’s doin in his kind of place in human history (E1)

Jesus used simple stories and characters taken from everyday life to convey His message and important Truths about God and His kingdom. He taught by use of analogy and comparisons. "To what shall we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use for it? It is like a mustard seed..." - Mark 4:30-31.

MEANING OF THE PARABLES OF JESUS

Although the meaning of a Parable is often not explicitly stated, it is not intended to be hidden or secret but, on the contrary, quite straightforward and obvious.

However, Jesus told his disciples that not everyone would understand His Parables. "To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God; but to the rest it is given in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand" - Luke 8:10.

https://www.conformingtojesus.com/charts-maps/en/parables_of_jesus_chart.htm

Jesus drew attention to the fact that not everyone would understand these. That they would not be clear to everyone. That they were intentionally not clear. (Mark 4)

Jesus was aware that some who heard His preaching refused to listen because of their rebellion to God, their hearts were closed to what He was saying; therefore, when He taught in Parables, their eyes and ears were shut and they were unable to see and understand the meaning of His analogies and comparisons. They had already made up their minds to not believe and to not listen. God can only reveal the secrets of His kingdom to the humble believer who acknowledges the need for God and for His Truth.

https://www.conformingtojesus.com/charts-maps/en/parables_of_jesus_chart.htm

(E1) The parables are one of the many ways that Jesus accomplished his mission of inaugurating the reign of God, the Kingdom of God. They were one of the ways that he invited people into the new reality he was creating.

So, why parables?

They were easy to remember. At least for those in the time Jesus was telling them. They are a little more difficult for us today to be able to recall them because some of them are not in our context of the day to day we live in.

I mean, really, when was the last time you went fishing with a dragnet to support your family, or had to worry about a lost sheep, or press wine in a vineyard?

But, for the context of Jesus time it was more than relevant. It would have made no sense if Jesus were to tell the people that he encountered that the sharing the gospel is as easy as picking up your cell phone to call Auntie Sue over in Macedonia and have your phone translate the truth in a way that she can understand.

That would have been silly.

But the parables served a strategic purpose in that mission, alongside his exorcisms, his healings, and his symbolic families that he created that would eat the symbolic meals together, celebrating the kingdom arriving. This is what he took into every town he went to.

He was bringing God’s heavenly reign into reality here on earth, creating a new covenant people among Israel that lived by the true heartbeat of the Creator God.

So How Should We Read the Parables of Jesus Today?

As we read parables, we shouldn’t focus on mining the text for doctrine or sifting for one-liner life lessons. Jesus is concerned with the power of creative imagery, symbolism, and beauty, and we should be too. He wants his audience to do more than listen and think; he wants them to imagine and feel, to be challenged and provoked.

Good art is like that.

https://bibleproject.com/blog/are-the-parables-of-jesus-confusing-on-purpose/

This is something I borrowed from a podcast from the Bible Project episodes on the Parables.

Let's do the thought experiment that will kind of get us into a way to approach the parables.

So let's try to imagine that you're a Jewish farmer. Your name Moshe.

Moshe and his wife Elisabeth. So, Moshe and Elisabeth, you're farmers on your ancestral land up in Galilee, say in the 1st Century.

Up in the hills, they look down on the lake of Galilee. Small town, but from your hillside you can see for other small towns because it's like a huge, gigantic amphitheater. The hills around the lake of Galilee, gigantic amphitheater. Not like you can yell to the people on the other side, but you can see the other side. Maybe 10 miles away and that kind of thing. Everything's close-knit family ties.

You've had this land for generations.Over 1000 years, you people have been inhabiting this land. Since the time of Joshua…except for the time of exile and you’ve resettled.

This is the land God promised Abraham, our ancestors lived here. And we've been living here now for at least the last three centuries or so uninterrupted since the return from the exile.

Your life is dominated by the fields, and by family and by synagogue. And in all of those contexts, you are singing the Psalms, you grew up and you tell your kids the stories of the prophets and the stories of kings of Israel - the stories of the Scriptures. This is your media. This is what you do at night. You sing and tell the stories.

Shema style. "When you get up, when you lay down, when you walk, when you go out, when you go in." That kind of thing. What's the story about? The story is about how the God who gave your family this land is not just the God of your tribe, but the creator of all he chose your family to be the vehicle of his work among the nations to bring blessing to the nations.

But there's this strange thing where this paradox or this problem in your family story because God gave our family this land. And what our ancestors did was turn away from this God, we're unfaithful to him. So we gave them over to exile and he allowed these foreign nations to come oppress and take over the land.

That started with Assyria up around the lake of Galilee. The Lake of Galilee was the first section of the Promised Land taken over and annexed by the Assyrian Empire in the seven hundreds. And then just remember the cycle of empires after that: Babylon, Persia, Greece, whole thing.

And in your day now, the Romans. They're everywhere, in your little town too.

At least the tax collectors are and the soldiers that protects their tax collector booth. So yeah, when you like harvest your wheat, you have to go take a whole wagon load of it down. That's not for your use or to sell, but you have to go take it to the tax collector checkpoint.

And you are not happy about that, it's excessive.

All your cousins have actually had to sell their land because of the tax burdens. And so they have to work their own land, but now as slaves to some Roman landowner who lives in Tiberius or somewhere else.

And the tax collectors have a reputation of always being on the up and up.

They add a little, little bit of extra...like a service fee.

That's what Matthew the tax collector used to charge before he followed Jesus. So for the last 40 years, you've been living under Roman occupation. You live in a militarized zone. Taxes keep going up.

Let's say this is right near the birth of Jesus around 4 BC or something.

You're on your own land, you have a compromised leader (Herod the Great) who doesn't represent your interests, and you have Roman militarization everywhere. Taxes are heavy, people are going into debt, people being sold into slavery.

If I can't afford the taxes, I go into debt.

I harvest my field, I sell off the harvest. Now, I've got a bunch of coin...

But it's not enough to pay your taxes and what provides for your family.

So I need certain amount of that to just pay for my family through the year...And to keep the business going.

And to plant the field for the next year. And then the Romans are saying, "Hey, I need a chunk of that and you don't have any more left." And they're like, "Well, I need it." And so the only way to pay them is to sell more.

Sell your land or sell yourself. Again, I'm trying to highlight features that are going to come up in the parables of Jesus. Debt slavery, selling land, acquiring land, working as a manager of someone else's land. This is life in Galilee. Dreams of finding treasure. And of course, just farming. Fig trees, olive trees, fruit wheat, harvest time, seed time.

And some food preparation parables?

And then just the day of baking bread, sweeping your house, looking for lost coins that you dropped. This is life and it's hard. I mean, it's hard. There are many regions of the world that are like this. They're occupied zones by an imperial power. There's a lot of poverty. This is part of the human story. But however, fueled by the hope of the scriptural story that you were raised on, your people have hope that God's gonna send a ruler, do something, do what Isaiah did. He's going to come back and dwell in the temple in Zion and kick out the bad guys. He's going to send a king.

Isaiah the prophet said, "The messengers of good news." Isaiah 40. "Behold your God he comes with power, his arm do bring justice but with his other arm he gathers in the little lambs and holds them close to his chest." You live by that hope. A hope for a king.

So you'd have your own king, which means you're free from the Romans. And also it would be a time of plenty, because...There'd be abundance, The new Eden.

So two things that they're struggling with: one, occupation two; there's a lot of poverty. Their scriptures are hoping for a time where those going.

God's presence comes back among us. When the temple is recognized as the home of the Creator God, and all Israel and all nations see it as the capital of the world.

That's even like a bigger step, which is not like, Are we free and have plenty. But the whole world recognizes...That Israel's God is the true. The God of the universe.

Inspired by that hope, there are movements of Jews who have chosen to rebel. They go hide up in the hills and perform raids. Guerrilla raids.

Later, in a few decades, they'll come to be called the daggers. Sounds like a gang name. The Sicarii. The daggers or the zealots. Because like Phineas and like Elijah, they were full of violence zeal, passion for Israel's God to be honored among the nations. Actually, you know of a couple of your second cousins who have gone missing. And all last you heard that they were seen running up into the caves and...

They want a revolution. They want the kingdom of God. Their slogan is "the kingdom of God now."

But they're kingdom of God movement. It's interesting. One movement was led by a guy named Simon bar Giora, and they actually went out to the Jordan River to reenact the crossing of the Jordan River by Joshua. They thought they were going to bring the new Israel.

Yeah. And you just heard recently there's a guy named John the Baptizer, who down by the river doing the same thing, but it's different. He's actually calling people to repent from all the years of unfaithfulness to Israel's God. He's not a military leader, but that other guy was. And they both seem to go down to the Jordan river where Joshua lead the people into the land.

This is all happening. But then you've heard that there's this new guy, an itinerant prophet and teacher to ring like the rural villages around Galilee, and he is announcing that God's rule and reign is arriving in Israel here now. And you've heard stories that he can heal the blind, that there are people tortured by evil, and Jesus has freed them. There was a guy living in a graveyard who would mutilate himself and last was seen, he's got a job fishing down at the lake and he's healthy now. I mean, you hear about this.

And then you're bringing in a load of wheat, and you hear, "That guy's in town. He's just down the road. His name is Jesus of Nazareth. Let's go hear him." You say to your farm man, you say to Moshe. So you go down here and there's a big crowd. You can barely see him. You can hear he's teaching, and this is what you hear him say. This is from Mark 4:26. "And Jesus was saying, the kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed on the soil, and he goes to bed at night, and then gets up by day, and the seeds sprouting and growing. How? He, himself doesn't know. The soil just produces crops by itself. First, the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. And then when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle because the harvest has come."

Like starts cutting it down. That's what the kingdom of God is like.

"You just described my year. That's what I do all year. If that's the kingdom of God, that's my job.

You're like, "This guy, Jesus is not as interesting as I thought he would be."

"Oh, wait, he's speaking again. What's he saying? What's he saying." "How well should we imagine the kingdom of God? To what can we compare it? It's like a mustard seed that is sown upon the soil. Even though it's smaller than all other seeds, yet when it is sound, it grows and becomes larger than all the garden plants. It forms huge branches so that birds in the air can nest under a shade."

It creates more questions than answers in a way. Especially if you're really actively waiting for the kingdom of God.

That's right. The kingdom of God isn't some abstract ideal. It's not a religious principle in the Merriam Webster dictionary definition. It's not a moral attitude.

It's waiting for something very real to happen in human history - very geopolitical event.

You're anticipating this, and if you're really invested in it, you may be moved out into the hillside to the leader rebellion. You're still not that invested. You're still working in the fields. You're trying to figure it out. You want it to come. Jesus comes and he's talking about the kingdom, and you're like, "What does he have to say? I want to understand what he means by the kingdom of God is here."

And the kingdom is like a man who farms and it's like a seed that grows. Small seed that becomes a large tree big and birds can you hang out in it.

Let's imagine the reactions of Moshe. What's he going to tell Elisabeth when he gets home that night?

Well, he'll remember the story. He'll remember exactly...it won't be like one of those 3-point sermons you go home and you're like, "Okay, what was point two again?" They're very simple.

He'll be able to tell her, "This is exactly what he said. He told this story."

"He said the kingdom of God is like me - like a farmer who waits for the crop that grows and then he harvests it."

"He described how it grows, and rays comes out."

Stage by stage. As you're telling it back to Elisabeth, Moshe, you remember, "Oh, yeah, it was interesting he said this detail that the farmer doesn't himself know how it grows. It just grows in its own time and way in kind of a mysterious way. Then all of a sudden, it's ready.

"What did he mean? Sometimes I wish the harvest would grow a little more quickly. Sometimes I wish it would not go so quick because I have to time it with my other fields then."

And also, "Who cares that I don't know how it works like?"

Tim: It works.

If you're a 1st Century farmer, I don't think you're sitting around agonizing about why. Or well, maybe you are. Maybe like because some years it doesn't grow as well. So you're like, "Man, I wish I understood this more so I can make sure my next harvest is really great.

The mustard seed story is about this contrast of small to great. He emphasizes it's like a little seed that's tiny, but then it becomes huge. So it's tiny, and you wouldn't think that a huge thing would come from it, but then a huge thing does come. And then that's both similar and different to a guy who sows seed and then it grows, but it grows at a pace and in a way that's mysterious. But it eventually does come to completion.

So at this point, if you're Moshe, you could just be like, "I don't have time for this." She's like, "This guy's weird."

Elisabeth. She's just like, "What does it mean? Let's go clean up the barn."

"Yamiyahu, who I was there standing next to him, he said, this guy's crazy. I think maybe he's right." But then here's the other thing. You're Moshe, you grew up on the Hebrew Scriptures, and you remember Isaiah 55, which God compares His word, the word that promises the new Exodus in the freedom of the new covenant and the new creation for our people. Isaiah said that God's word is like a seed. That when he sows it in the ground, it grows a plant and does not return to Him empty. And you also remember that strange dream that Daniel had about a big tree that the birds of the air nested in its branches. But that was Babylon. But then you remember that Daniel said that that tree would get cut down and replaced by the kingdom of God. "Wow. This Jesus guy, maybe he's not crazy."

"Maybe he's been meditating on Hebrew Scriptures."

"Maybe these are like little encoded Hebrew Bible parables. Maybe they're a little condensed stories that for those who will get the time to ponder it, he's actually saying something really profound but in a concealed way. Because that's my little imaginative experiment.

So Moshe, now as he farms, he's thinking about these and he's thinking about Isaiah, thinking about God's Word as a seed.

God's Word about the new Exodus and the new kingdom of God that would come after exile.

And so as he thinks about these, he's thinking, "Yes, the kingdom of God, this thing I'm waiting for, this geopolitical moment in human history where I'm no longer under Roman occupation, but also seems that there's going to be a new type of abundance, a new type of human heart and new type of all these things, this thing, it starts really small. There's something about it that's small and surprisingly small, but it's going to become great. Also, how it grows, I'm not going to understand. How it's going to come to be, Jesus wants me to appreciate.

The guy goes to bed gets up day after day after day and it's just slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly developing until it's ready. And it will be ready. Maybe this Jesus is onto something. God's sure taking a sweet time. Maybe Jesus is telling us something about the long time that we've been waiting and the God's ways and timeline might be very different than our ways and timeline. I think if that guy Jesus of Nazareth comes back, I think I'm going to go back. That's it.

Jesus would call Moshe, somebody who has ears to hear. Because someone who doesn't have ears to hear will just be like, "I don't have time for this. This guy's crazy." And that's how many people responded to Jesus. But then there were other people who were impressed that there was something here with this man and that the signs and wonders he performed, and the teachings and his parables gave them a new way of thinking about what they thought they knew. And so they kept going back and they have questions. There you go.

https://bibleproject.com/podcast/purpose-parables/transcript/

Major Parables of Jesus

Lamp under Basket -- Matthew 5:14-16

Wise and Foolish Builders -- Matthew 7:24-27

Sower -- Matthew 13:3-9, 18-22

Wheat and Tares -- Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Mustard Seed -- Matthew 13:31-32

Pearl of Great Price -- Matthew 13:45-46

Dragnet -- Matthew 13:47-50

Lost Sheep -- Matthew 18:10-14

Unforgiving Servant -- Matthew 18:21-25

Workers in the Vineyard -- Matthew 20:1-16

Two Sons -- Matthew 21:28-32

Wicked Vinedressers -- Matthew 21:33-40

Wedding Feast -- Matthew 22:2-14

Fig Tree -- Matthew 24:32-33

Faithful and Evil Servants -- Matthew 24:45-51

Wise and Foolish Virgins -- Matthew 25:1-13

Talents -- Matthew 25:14-30

Sheep and Goats -- Matthew 25:31-46

Growing Seed -- Mark 4:26-29

Watchful Servants -- Mark 13:33-37

Moneylender -- Luke 7:41-43

Good Samaritan -- Luke 10:30-37

Friend in Need -- Luke 11:5-8

Rich Fool -- Luke 12:16-31

Unfruitful Fig Tree -- Luke 13:5-9

Lowest Seat -- Luke 14:7-14

Great Banquet -- Luke 14:16-24

Building Tower -- Luke 14:27-30

King to War -- Luke 14:31-33

Lost Coin -- Luke 15:8-10

Lost Son -- Luke 15:11-32

Shrewd Manager -- Luke 16:1-8

Rich Man and Lazarus -- Luke 16:19-31

Master and Servant -- Luke 17:7-10

Persistent Widow -- Luke 18:2-8

Pharisee and Tax Collector -- Luke 18:10-14