98. Beginner Bible Course: The parables of Jesus

EPISODE 98    The simple Bible overview of…THE PARABLES OF JESUS – AN OVERVIEW

It shouldn't surprise you…

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…I'm a huge fan of stories of word pictures. You can talk to me all day about how you feel, but if you tell me a story or give me a word picture of how you feel, I normally get it pretty much right away. For example, it's hard for my wife to focus on anything when the kitchen is dirty and particularly when there's dishes piled in the sink. But once those dishes are taken care of, she's dialed in all mine and we'll focus on anything. I learned early on to capture the power of that word, picture dishes in her sink to help communicate how I was feeling. So if I came home after a hard day, with all kinds of responsibilities on my mind, all I had to do was say, babe, let me tell you a little about the dishes in my sink right now.

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Then she knew exactly how I was feeling. I'm a huge fan of stories and word pictures. I'm in good company with Jesus. Jesus felt the same. In the old Testament, we run across several powerful stories that really got the message across after David's sin with Bathsheba and had her husband murdered. Nathan comes to David with the dishes in my sink, kind of story. Read about it. In second, Samuel chapter 12, people around David had been whispering gossip and God had been really convicting his heart for maybe as much as six months over this sin. But David sat on his hands and did nothing until Nathan came in and told him a little story, a story about a poor man who had a family pet a lamb.

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You need to go read it for yourself. It's a dandy in the gospels. You're going to get an entire array of stories like that from Jesus. We've labeled them. The parables of Jesus in the sermon on the Mount, Jesus said he didn't come to destroy the old Testament law or to compromise it in any way. He came to fulfill it. Those old Testament laws, like the 10 commandments, the family rules. It's what God wanted for his people, expectations that they couldn't meet, but he would help them. God's people had become calloused and they'd embraced as normal things. Very contrary to God's expectation.

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His family rules in the sermon on the Mount Jesus clarifies in his words, his preaching, what God intended from the beginning, what was normal in God's eyes for his people. It was a punch in the face of his listeners, including the disciples. It challenged almost everything they thought was normal and godly and noble and worth pursuing. Jesus knew going in those words, themselves would never Pierce the callous hearts of his listeners, but maybe his stories would at least would Pierce the hearts of some of them it'll help to know what the word parable means. It literally means to throw beside I'm sharing with you a story I'm taking from a teacher.

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I had about the meaning of parables. He was in a lecture hall, was explaining a new medical procedure to a number of doctors from across the country. It was a procedure called a staple deck dummy. He turned on an overhead projector and put a replica of the Stacey is a small bone in the inner ear on the screen that looked pretty big projected on the large auditorium wall. Then to give the physicians an idea of just how small the Stacy's is. He threw a dime beside the state on the overhead projector in an instant, every single surgeon in that room knew just how small the state B's his parables were throw besides they were the dime.

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He used something his listeners understood to explain the state BS to them, things they didn't understand or had twisted under other things. They now considered normal. You've done throw beside parables. You take a picture of a spider and it looks massive up close. And then you take a picture with a pencil eraser next to it. And now people know how big it really is. Jesus really needed these stories. These throw beside parables. And there's two reasons for that. The first is what we talked about in episode eight, the things regarding God and how God works are high and hard to understand for us Pygmies.

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And of course, they're even harder to understand when our hearts have become calloused over and we've embraced as normal. The things that are absolutely abnormal in God's eyes. Now, King Jesus is trying to explain to his would be citizens, those deep principles of his kingdom, like grace, love forgiveness, mercy, the need for interdependence and community. The values of heaven. That really matter the importance of the hereafter, not just the here, no amount of preaching and words is going to get through those calluses and reveal these difficult to grasp truths.

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So in the rest of the gospels, Jesus breaks loose the stories that throw beside parables, using things that they know, he teaches them about the things they could not know or no longer know because of their cultural calluses. Some of Jesus' parables are really short and others quite long. Sometimes they're in the form of a simple simile or metaphor, a one or two sentence. This is like this. The kingdom of heaven is like a man who found a treasure in a field, be aware of the leaven of the Pharisees on the other end of the spectrum. Some of Jesus' parables are long.

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They're actually almost allegories. You know what an allegory is, Pilgrim's progress. As an allegory, the Chronicles of Narnia series is an allegory. An allegory is a story where each of the parts has meaning or significance. It represents something. Jesus will tell parables such as the parable of the sower and the seed where each part is significant. But the majority of Jesus' parables fall in between simple similarly metaphors or more complicated allegories. These are simple stories using common situations or objects with the goal of teaching.

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Just one main point, please don't turn these kinds of parables of Jesus with one simple point into allegories. It makes for great stories or preaching, but that's not what rabbi Jesus intended. As Jesus started. Year two of his ministry. He kicked into parable mode. As a teacher, I asked my students, why do you think he started doing parables? Now one obvious possibility is this comes right after the sermon on the Mount. So it makes sense. Jesus would start illustrating the principles of the kingdom in story form, but the gospel writers hinted another reason while we'll see Jesus was very popular in year two, a rockstar, those who opposed him started to turn up the volume they began to dig in.

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They attributed his miraculous signs to the power of Satan. We'll see, even some of his family members sought him out thinking he'd gone off the deep end. It's simultaneous with this. The Jesus kicks in to teaching his parables. Apparently his disciples wondered about this too, because they come to him directly and ask him, why do you teach in parables? Rabbi? Jesus' answer might surprise you. It's simply this so that some of you will really get it and others won't get it at all. Jesus was saying I'm teaching in parable form to reveal truth to those who will receive it. And to conceal it from those who are objected.

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Think about that for a minute. John and his prologue, the gospel trailer said Jesus was the living word of God who came to reveal God to us. Now just over a year into his ministry, Jesus starts intentionally teaching in parables to hide truth from those who were digging in and rejecting him and attributing his power to Satan. I asked my students, why would Jesus want to hide truth from those who opposed him? I've had several students respond with one of Jesus' own word pictures. Don't throw your pearls before swine. They'll just trample them under foot. Why would Jesus continue to reveal truth only to have a trampled?

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That's a pretty good answer, isn't it? But there's another reason. And we find it buried even in Jesus' parables themselves. It's the principle, the greater, the knowledge you reject, the greater, the judgment you incur with great knowledge comes great responsibility and greater judgment. I suggest to my students, Jesus hiding truth from those who had trample, it is actually an act of mercy on his part. I've had students ask me how come two people could see Jesus, hear his teachings, watch him perform miracles and come to two different conclusions. He was God's promised son, or he was an imposter empowered by Satan.

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I answered that question with my own picture, an optical illusion. I showed them in class. I'd like you to go to Google images and look at that optical illusion. When you get to Google images, search for optical illusion, comma, hag, H a G. I want you to look at that picture and tell me what you see. Do you see an old witchy lady or do you see a beautiful little princess in profile? Some of you might see both, but I think most of you will only see one that is until someone points out to you, another perspective, that's what we're going to find in the rest of the gospels. When Jesus gives his parables, his throw besides stories, some will be awakened to his truth.

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Others will conclude he's a dangerous rabbi and pure evil. And we'll find later in the gospels, in the new Testament, that's precisely the dilemma. Jesus wanted to put his listeners in. So now that you know what the parables are, let's experience some of Jesus' parables together. And we'll do that in our next wordpicture.