Why Parables? Matthew 13:10-17 August 28, 2016

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1 Matthew 13:10-17 August 28, 2016 Why Parables? As many of you heard this past week, we are beginning a new series studying the parables. Last week, we learned that a key purpose of a parable was to give a message that might be hard to give. It is not that you soften it with a story, but you tell the truth in the form of a story so that the person receiving it will do so without a negative reaction. This is what the prophet Nathan did with King David over his sin with Bathsheba. This morning, we move into the New Testament, the gospels to get into the parables of Jesus. But before we look at any of the specific parables next week, I want to take the time this morning to look at a passage where Jesus lays out the reason He so often spoke in parables, and it might not be what you think. A common assumption is that Jesus taught in parables to give the truth in the form of stories, stories taken from common life, so that the people could better relate to the truth. That would be the same reason pastors are taught to use stories and illustrations to improve the effectiveness of their sermons. We really are a story engaging people. We tend to remember the story, even if we forget the point the story makes. The problem is that is not the reason Jesus taught in parable. We know that because of the passage we have before us this morning: Matthew 13: There He is asked why He so often taught in parables, and He gives the answer. And His answer might shock us. It is the opposite of what we would naturally think. In fact, His reason doesn t even make good sense, it is offensive. He spoke in parables to KEEP some people from understanding the point. Doesn t that sound harsh? But that is precisely what He said. And yet, if you have already looked at the text, you have seen that most of His answer is quoted directly from the Old Testament. The prophets predicted such a time, such a message, such a technique to teach some without teaching some others hearing the same story. This is what I mean by parables being more complicated than you might imagine. You must not be satisfied to understand them on a surface level only.

2 You must dig into them to reveal the truth that is intended. This is what Jesus meant by, He who has ears to hear, let him listen! Our text comes in the middle of the telling of the parable of the sower, or parable of the soils. We will study that parable at a later date. But for now, I only want to deal with the interaction between Jesus and His disciples in the middle of the story. Follow along as Jesus gives His disciples some harsh truth about teaching with parables. READ Matthew 13: Main point: Parables are designed to teach Jesus own about His Kindom in a way that others listening will not be able to understand. They are designed to give a message to one group of people without the larger group of people knowing the message. It would be like speaking in code language or social media shorthand. If I say, GBR, you know what I mean. If I say, Hoo-ah, or Semper Fi, others know what I mean. It is insider language that conveys more than those around you pick up. The part that confuses us is why Jesus would want to share truths about His Kingdom in such a form. Why wouldn t He want everyone to know the truth? (2 parts) I. Closed minded and hard hearted people do not get to receive the good news of the Kingdom of God. vv Jesus teaching included material not suitable for all, but only for His own. When that was the case, He often turned to parables. Parables allowed Him to speak to a large crowd, and yet give a message only intended for some. 10 The disciples came to him and asked, Why do you speak to the people in parables? As I said, we will deal with the parable of the sower at a later date. But the point here is that the style of Jesus teaching confused the disciples. Why would Jesus teach in a way that confused everyone (including them until Pentecost). The wording here points to crowds, to the masses. Why does Jesus change His teaching technique when He is in front of the masses? In fact, just the

3 question makes my point that the parables are not what so many think they are. The disciples too thought Jesus would have been better off just teaching the straight truth to everyone. Teach it to everyone and let those who understand it best relay it to the others. But that is not how He did it. In front of His disciples, He would teach straight up. But when in front of the masses, He would utilize parables. Why? 11 He replied, The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Uhh, I think that is a harsh statement. The revealing of the reality and nature of the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God, or My kingdom, were only for the disciples. Now, this does not mean just for the 12 necessarily, but for the inside group, for the subset within the whole. I could spend several sermons just dealing with the Kingdom of heaven, or of God. This is the bulk of the substance of Jesus teaching, an oft neglected subject. We don t often take the time to talk about the Kingdom. We don t think in terms of the Kingdom. But Jesus did. He was all about the Kingdom, the nature of the Kingdom, life in the Kingdom, advancement of the Kingdom. This was His language. So here, He says that there are secrets of the Kingdom, and that not everyone got to hear them. It is not some sort of magic, or a secret club. Rather the secrets of the Kingdom revolved around what was God s plan as opposed to what many people thought was His plan. These secrets were referenced throughout the Old Testament, but the people just didn t see them. They saw the coming of the Messiah as a day of triumph over their biggest enemy, at the time the Romans. The coming of the Kingdom would be when the Messiah comes, leading them to victory and restoring the great Israelite empire. In reality, that was never God s plan. Their greatest enemy was not the Romans, who would be replaced by some other group, and some other group, all the way to the present. Instead, their greatest enemy was sin, satan, and the separation that caused from God. So, the coming of the Messiah would bring defeat of THAT enemy, and the establishment of a kingdom under the lordship of Christ. It would not have borders, or a capitol, or a parliament. There would

4 be no standing army with uniforms. Instead, it would permeate every nation, every people, from every tribe and tongue. It would grow from within nations. It would be made up of people from all walks of life. It would have as its leader someone who was not even on earth! That is a different sort of kingdom. Agreed? And this information of the revealing of the beginning of the kingdom was given only to His own. Why? We see the answer in the following verses. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is a general principle of direction, used here for information, but elsewhere for resources. The people on the inside, in the know, will receive even more information. But those on the outside will receive a whole lot less. It does not even out, rather it redistributes what has already been given. In this case, the ones who thought they were in the know were the Jews, the people who claimed Yahweh as their God. But most of them had turned away, had tuned out, had given up on their God. So, the information, the secrets to this kingdom did not go to them. They weren t listening. They weren t watching. Consequently, Yahweh was going to a subset within that group, starting with the disciples of Jesus. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables: Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. He backs up His statement with a quotation taken from several OT passages, from Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. In all of those passages, the people of God are described as not getting it, of choosing not to get it, of having it right in front of them while they turned the other way. It s there, but they don t see it or hear it. They have no insight into what is right in front of them. They don t get it. 14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

5 You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. Jesus then quotes the prophet Isaiah, taken from the same text where Isaiah sees the Lord and is sent out as His spokesman. Truly, this is an indictment of the people. The Lord will send His messenger, but the people will not listen, they will not get it. They will have no insight. They will be content with their superficial and incorrect thinking. They will assume things about their relationship with God that are not based on truth. They will assume that they ARE the people of God, even though they have rejected God at every turn, killing His prophets, choosing to follow after other gods. They wrongly assume that God will not hold such things against them. After all, they are His chosen people. They don t get it. The truth is such people are not even in the Kingdom! 15 For this people s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them. They are hardened, immune, deaf, blind. They have all the tools, all the resources, but they ignore it all. If they hadn t, they would have been healed. If they had been perceptive, open, watching, listening, the Lord would have spared them, given them more, let them in on the secrets. But they were content to be wrong, and so suffered for it. There is a sense here that disturbs our minds more than those of Jesus day, Isaiah s day. We think in terms of either our will, or the Lord s choosing. They are distinct and different. But to them, the distinction is not as clear. To us, if God chooses not to tell them, HE is responsible. Or else they are responsible and God did not choose. But from their perspective, both truths can be put in the same context without contradiction. He chose some and not all, yet they are responsible. We don t have to define it any more specifically than

6 that. He chose, but they are responsible. They are callous, hard, blind, deaf. They knew enough, but they chose to ignore what they knew. If they hadn t, God would have brought them in, but they did not. So, what does this have to do with parables? They were hearing the truth about the kingdom, but they were too hardened, too blind, too deaf to understand it. So, further information was kept from them. The disciples received it but they did not. It was there, it was available, but it came in the form of parable, stories that took thinking to understand. Why? Because too often they were the subject of the parable. They were the rocky soils, they were the unforgiving servants, they were the priests and Levites who walked around the injured man rather than help him as the good Samaritan did. The stories were about them and how they were going to be left out of the kingdom. They thought they were in a privileged position, but they were only fooling themselves. They thought they were at the center, when actually they were on the outside looking in. Okay, so how should WE take this. I think we ought to take it with all seriousness. No one is entitled to be a part of the Kingdom of God. No one is born into it. No one receives entrance on the basis of pedigree, of social status, of religious tests. In fact, it is designed to be an upside down kingdom, where everything is stood on its head. People who are outcasts are in, while those with pedigrees are out. Sinners are in, while the Righteous are out, or bad people are in while good people are out. The first are last and the last are first. It is all backwards, on purpose. So what makes you think you are part of the Kingdom? Is it because you go to church? to this church? to the right kind of church? Is it because you come from a long line of Christians? Is it because you see yourself as pretty good, as not as bad as your neighbor? Then you re probably not in the kingdom. You are dull, calloused, blind, deaf, hard. You missed the message. The kingdom is not for the good, but for those who know they are bad, hopelessly bad, in desperate need of saving. Such people understand the kingdom. May that be all of us. Right? II. Blessed are the people who receive the good news of the Kingdom of God. vv

7 Despite so many who do not get it, some do. Many have, many have waited for, yearned for, prayed for, the coming of the kingdom to them, in their generation, in their culture, in their household. So, when it came, or comes to you and yours, you are blessed, incredibly blessed. When the Kingdom comes to your household, give thanks to God for choosing this time and place to make the hidden things about His kingdom known. 16 But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. Some do see, some do hear. Notice that it comes as a result of God blessing. In other words, as we see in the Sermon on the Mount, the blessing does not come to those who see and hear, but you see and hear because He is blessing you to be able to do so. The seeing and hearing is the content of the blessing. In other words, God caused you to see, God caused you to hear, God caused you to understand. It was the Spirit that makes sense out of the parables. It is not that only smart people will get it, or only educated people will get it, or only those who have their Bibles memorized who get it. It will be the ones blessed by the Spirit of God who get it. God gets to choose who will get it. 17 For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it. Again, the truth is that there have always been people who got it, and waited patiently and expectantly for it to take place. They knew that God s blessing was not automatic because you were Jewish, or good, or of noble birth. They knew there would come a day when the Lord would indeed save His wayward children. They hoped it would be in their day. But they died, in faith, but they died. We get to experienced what they only dreamed some day would take place. They lived and died in faith. We live as recipients of the blessing. Thank you Lord for the blessing. So how should we take this side? With thanksgiving. With gratitude for those who came before, for those who taught us, for being able to see, able to

8 hear, able to understand. I regularly give thanks that I live on this side of the cross, this side of Pentecost, in a day when we have the whole word of God, and all the helps that come along with it. We don t have to memorize the whole Bible. We have multiple copies of multiple translations on our shelves. We don t have to accept and believe that the Christ will someday come, bringing with Him His kingdom. We have to accept and believe that He did come, and we have warehouses of evidence to support it. We are not asked to believe in a kingdom yet to be built, but in a kingdom that has come, that has survived, that has grown, multiplied, thrived. Oh yes, I am so thankful I live now instead of them. They had it much more difficult than we have it. If we believe this passage is the Word of God, then what should be different about our lives? 1) We will get rid of any presumption of entitlement to be in the Kingdom of God. 2) We will get rid of any presumption to automatically understand what that Kingdom is like based on our own knowledge and wisdom and tradition. 3) We will diligently study the Word of God under the guidance of the Spirit of God, so we might understand correctly what it teaches. 4) We will approach the parables, not as cute and easily understood illustrations, but as hard hitting, insights filled stories intended to push our assumptions about the Kingdom of God. If they don t hit us hard, then we need to keep studying!