This morning we are going to begin our study of Matthew chapter 13 and a number of the parables of Jesus. Many people throughout the ages, both believers and unbelievers have recognized the ingenuity and effectiveness of the parables of Jesus. They were simple word pictures that present found spiritual lessons. What made them so effective? I think it begins with the fact that stories are inherently memorable, especially if they are simple and relatable. Stories are great for teaching because they stick in our minds better than straight facts. They keep our attention and when their morals are explained clearly, it all comes together better.
I believe that this is one of the reasons why some people liked history class in school far more than others. The ones who saw it as just a bunch of facts they had to memorize and regurgitate never liked it because it was just a bunch of statistics about dead people that they did not care about. But if you can put those facts into a story (that is even right there in the name “his-story”) those facts not only become more memorable, but far more interesting as the lives and events that they describe come to life.
Many of the best preachers are recognized as such because of their ability to interweave story or illustrations into their sermons. One of my favorite people to read when studying theology or Scripture is the Puritan Thomas Watson. You cannot hardly finish a single sentence without some beautiful and simplistic illustration of the grand propositional statement he was making. If I ever have a particularly good illustration in my sermon, it is probably because I stole it from him.
Jesus was a master of this kind of preaching. There was no truism or doctrine so complex that he could not give His listeners insight by making a simple illustration or telling a short story. Though Jesus used a lot of parables and illustrations, it is by no means the primary way he taught. Numerous scholars and preachers, especially in the last century, have tried to argue all Jesus did was tachin parables. As we look throughout the gospel accounts we see that parables actually make up a rather small percentage of his teaching. Think about the Sermon on the Mount that we spent so long in. The sermon is three chapters long and you can argue that there is one, maybe two parables in the whole thing. The sermon is peppered with imagery as is so much of the teachings of our Lord, but they are usually short, less than a full sentence. Just enough to associate a mental picture with the propositional statement that he was making.
Before we go to in depth covering the parables in chapter 13, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about how we are to approach and understand them. This is important because there is a lot of misunderstanding and misrepresenting of the parables of Jesus. These errors are made by both biblical scholars with lots of letters and fancy titles after their names as well as people we might consider as “lay authors” who write devotionals or other kinds of study material for general consumption. There are lots of reasons for these kinds of errors, and we are going to cover them this morning, but before we do that, let us start with defining what a “parable” is.
What is a parable? How does it differ from other illustrations like metaphors, similes, fables, or allegories? A parable goes beyond a simple analogy. It is an elongated simile or metaphor with a distinctively spiritual lesson at its core. A parable extends beyond a phrase and into a story or a more complex image that usually demands further explanation or a clear understanding of the context to be fully and rightly understood.
For example, the spiritual truth that Jesus was highlighting with the story of the good Samaritan cannot be understood by reading just the story itself. The story of the good Samaritan in Luke 10 begins in verse 30 and is a beautiful picture of someone who should be the enemy, going above and beyond in his care for a helpless victim even when the victims on countrymen and religious figures would not. The vast majority of people who read this story see nothing beyond a picture of kindness. That is not the point of the story. You have to start back in verse 25 when a scribe or lawyer stands up and asks Jesus “teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The story of the good Samaritan is not a parable about kindness, it is Jesus demonstrating to an arrogant man the impossibility of fulfilling the perfect law of God.
A parable also differs from other illustrations in that it is a story that has characters and a plot, not a simple comparison. These parables are very in length from the very simple, such as the one we will see in verse 33. To the longer parables like the one commonly known as the Prodigal Son which actually has separate but equally important plots with the younger wild son and the older dutiful son. parables of any length need characters, a plot, and a clear point.
The way the word “parable” is used in Scripture and how people define it can make it a little bit more difficult to label certain illustrations of Jesus one way or the other. We do sometimes see the word “parable” being applied to some more simple analogies or even what we might call a proverb.
To put it simply, a parable is an illustrative simple story made for comparison’s sake, specifically for the purpose of teaching a spiritual lesson. We must also remember when looking at parables that the spiritual lesson revealed in the comparison is always the primary and usually only point of that parable. What I mean by that is that a parable is not the same thing as an allegory. An allegory is a story in which every character and every plot point has a deeper or hidden meaning behind it. Sometimes the allegories are right on the nose like Pilgrim’s Progress. Every character has a name that defines them or their primary characteristic. Each town or event or place has a very obvious name that is flashing a neon sign showing its deeper meaning in the Christian’s walk. It is not hard to see what the author was trying to get you to. Other allegories are more hidden. One that you probably read in school, well maybe not all of you because it was not written until the 1950s, is The Crucible by Arthur Miller in which Miller satirizes the Sen. Joseph McCarthy led “witchhunts” of communists.
All that to say, parables, unlike allegory, are not meant to be mined for layer upon layer of secret significance. Their lessons are simple, focused, and without a great deal of embellishment meant to relay secret truths. The details that are in them are there just to improve the scenery not lead us down further paths of spiritual discovery. For example, the oil and wine the good Samaritan used to dress the suffering traveler’s wounds have no symbolic or spiritual significance beyond showing that the Samaritan used expensive but appropriate materials to give the best care possible. What is important in every parable is the central spiritual lesson and if there are any details that require further understanding, Jesus always gives that explanation like we will see in the parable of the sower here in chapter 13.
The next thing we need to understand about parables is how to interpret them correctly. One of the reasons they are so often misinterpreted by people today is that they are filtered through the postmodern mindset. Jesus used parables to teach and defend the truth. If we take the time to study and carefully search each of his parables, we can come to an understanding of the clear propositional statement that he is making in each case. As with all of Scripture, though some portions may be more difficult to understand than others, every parable has a single divinely inspired meaning and therefore a proper interpretation. The whole point of both Scripture and the parables of Jesus is for us to know objective truth.
The postmodern mindset that dominates our culture and has infected the church is built on the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth. Truth that is independent of the individual’s sentiments. Truth, like beauty postmodernists argue, is in the eye of the beholder. It is up to the individual to determine what their truth is, and no one can tell them otherwise. It is subjective, changing from one person to the next. As such, the parables of Jesus tend to draw adherents of this philosophy because they argue that these stories are open to interpretation and can be understood and applied however you think is best. People with this worldview are especially drawn to parables because they believe that with them Jesus was being intentionally obscure or ambiguous so that each person could see the story and whatever light they wanted and form their own opinion and applications.
As a culture, we have become obsessed with seeing stories as ambiguous in this way. There are many books and movies written with this intentional ambiguity so that the viewer can form their own ideas about the story, they can interpret it however they want and in the end, there are no wrong answers. Likewise, in philosophy, those who are ambiguous in their beliefs or statements are seen as deep or thoughtful. Ambiguity in philosophy is not deep, it is dumb; both in the sense that it is incapable of speaking of saying anything real or meaningful and in that it is illogical and inconsistent.
This mindset is taken further as those both within Christianity and without see stories and parables as being antithetical to propositional statements. Our postmodern world does not like propositional statements because they are inherently binary; it is either true or false. Clear propositional statements do not allow for that kind of ambiguity. Stories on the other hand are perceived as fluid or subjective and that is why they are so popular in the postmodern culture. The facts of the story do not matter, just the “truth” you take from it.
We see this sort of thing happening in the media all the time on all points of the political spectrum. Facts of the event do not matter, as they will use the “story” to further their agenda. This is what leads to statements by sitting United States Senators like “I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.” The facts of the story do not matter only “my truth.” And if the facts of the story do not support “my truth” or my version of being morally right, then we can reinterpret them or change them to fit what we want. When the facts do not matter, the meaning of the story can be whatever you want it to be.
What does this have to do with the Bible or the parables? Popular amongst many who call themselves “Christians” today is the idea of replacing “sermons” with “stories.” Sermons give you the facts of Scripture and make propositional statements; about God, about theology, what is required of you, but stories can be left open and ambiguous, molded by the listeners interpretation, what they want their truth to be. This approach is deadly because it makes you the master of Scripture rather than Scripture the master of you. When you do not like what the Bible seems to be saying, you change the story to something you do like. This robs Scripture of its authority. It robs Christianity of its foundation.
The Bible does contain many stories, much of the Old Testament is the story of God’s people and his interaction with them. The story of Adam and Eve, of Noah, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the story of the Israelites. But like Jesus’ parables, no story in Scripture is recorded merely for the story’s sake. Every one of them has an intentional spiritual lesson to convey that is based in objective truth. Every well told story makes a point, and Jesus never told a parable without a clear point in mind, and one that we can understand. That is the very nature of parables. It is the reason why we must see one central lesson as the heart of every parable if we are to make any sense of it at all. There is no need to look for multiple layers of secret meanings or suppose that there is some deeper symbolism hiding beneath the surface.
Some of Jesus’s parables are straightforward, and their intent is easy to see, some are a bit more difficult and they take some time to study and understand. So, what is the right way to interpret parables? How do we understand them? We start, as we should every time we approach the Word of God, by humbling ourselves and looking to be changed by it rather than to force it to say what we want to hear. Recognizing that there is a single intent, a single essential truth that it is conveying, and seeking the truth even if it is difficult for us to hear.
We need to study the context of the parable, what was happening before Jesus told it and what happened right after. What was he teaching on, what was he focusing on? And finally, we need to realize that some of them do take serious study. Not all of them are straightforward and Jesus does not give a further explanation of all of them, but that does not mean we cannot know for sure what he was teaching.
It brings us to our last question, “why did Jesus teach in parables?” And for that we can see a number of clear answers in our text for this morning. We are going to jump around a little bit in chapter 13 to get all of it, but primarily we will be in verses 10-16. We see at the start of chapter 13 that Jesus went out of the house and began teaching the crowds that were gathered around him from a boat just offshore. Instead of preaching the way he normally did, he began speaking to them in parables. After beginning the parable of the sower, in verse 10 the disciples came and asked Jesus, “Why do you speak to them in parables?”
Jesus answered them in verse 11, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, ‘you will keep on hearing, but will not understand; you will keep on seeing, that will not perceive; for the heart of this people has become dull, with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes, otherwise they would see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return and I would heal them.’ But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. For truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desire to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”
So why did Jesus teach in parables? I am going to break it down into 3 answers, 2 Jesus gives clearly in this passage and in verses 34-35 which we will read in a moment; and 1 we can see from the context.
The first comes from the context and in the changed relationship that we saw in chapters 11 and 12. For the first two years of his ministry, the Lord had been preaching openly to the crowds and performing many miracles which drew huge multitudes of people. For two years he had traveled around Galilee and Judea openly proclaiming his message of the coming kingdom and teaching in a way that amazed the crowds. Teaching as one having authority and not as their scribes as we read at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. In chapters 11 and 12 we saw the growing rejection of the people and the culmination of that in chapter 12 with the Pharisees being condemned. Of course, it was not just the Pharisees but the entire generation that had rejected Jesus as Messiah. He was not the kind of Messiah that hoped for. He was clearly opposed to their man-made religious traditions and he was not leading the cultural Revolution they thought he should be.
So, the first reason the Lord began teaching in parables was because of the rejection that he received from the Pharisees and from the people at large. In a way, he is beginning to thin the crowd. At this point in his ministry, we read the other Gospels, Jesus begins to make the difficult statements to accept such as the one in John 6, “truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will have no life in your selves. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day… This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.”
Jesus was shifting his focus away from the crowds and onto his 12 disciples. From here on out, most of the teaching is directed at them rather than the multitudes that show up. We will still see events like the feeding of the 4000, but the focus is on the disciples and these parables were a way of confusing those who are only there for the show. The Lord ended a number of these parables with the phrase, “He who has ears, let him hear.” As we will see next week as we begin to look at the parable of the sower in verse nine. Essentially that phrase means, “if you can understand it, then understand it.” Jesus was not mocking his hearers but rather pointing out to them that they would need more than their own human understanding to interpret the meaning. He was inviting them to search further, but only if they were willing to submit themselves to the Spirit of God. That is why it was only his disciples who asking him to explain the parables.
The second reason for the parables was to reveal and to illustrate the truths of the kingdom of God. In verses 34-35 Matthew writes, “all these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables, and he did not speak to them without a parable. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet; ‘I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden since the foundation of the world.” Jesus was explaining aspects of the kingdom of God that had not been revealed before. For those who could understand him, for those who had ears to hear, he was illustrating these truths with memorable stories that would help the true disciples to envision that which they were being brought into and going to take to the rest of the world.
For those who are hungering and thirsting for righteousness, for those whom the Holy Spirit had opened their eyes and their ears, these parables served as illuminating illustrations of crucial truths. When these parables are understood in the correct light, they accomplish what Jesus praised God for back at the end of chapter 11 when he said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”
The last reason why Jesus began teaching in parables is explained in verses 10-16. Where the eternal truths were made simple and illuminated through the parables for the disciples, they had the exact opposite effect on those who oppose and reject Christ. The symbolism hides the truth from anyone without the discipline or desire to seek out Christ’s meaning. In a way, it was a divine judgment against those who had scorned Jesus with unbelief, or apathy. They had rejected Christ and so Jesus was rejecting them by teaching in parables.
As he said in verse 13, “Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and well hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.” And in quoting Isaiah in verse 15 “for the heart of this people has become dull, with their ears they scarcely here, and they have closed their eyes.” They had stopped up their own ears and held their own eyes tightly closed. It was a stubborn and deliberate unbelief. A further outworking of hearts that had already committed the unpardonable sin that we saw in chapter 12.
In a way, this is also a merciful act by the Lord. Obscuring the truth from unbelievers was an act of mercy because the more truth they heard and rejected, the worse it would be for them in the final judgment. The more they heard Christ, the more truth they were accountable for. The more they harden their hearts against the truth, the more severe the judgment would be. Jesus was concealing the spiritual lessons in everyday stories and symbols so as to keep the guilt from being piled upon the heads of the Pharisees.
The parables both hid the truth from the self-righteous or self-satisfied people who rejected Jesus as the Messiah while at the same time these parables reveal the truth to eager souls who desired the eternal bread that he offered.
I know that this sermon may seem more like a lecture than a sermon. In seminary, this would have been referred to as a “lermon.” I do hope you were still enriched by it. Hopefully it will help serve as a foundation as we move forward in understanding the parables of Jesus both here in chapter 13 and throughout the rest of the gospel as we move forward. Understanding the danger of the postmodern philosophies and man centered interpretations of these parables is critically important because so many in the wider church today have given up the idea of objective truth and twisted the intent of these parables into meaning something completely different than what Christ did. They, like the Pharisees have stopped up their ears and close their eyes to the truth that Jesus revealed in these simple yet profound stories. We must be willing to submit our minds to the truth of Scripture, to be changed by it rather than attempt to mold it into something that fits our sinful desires.