Jesus' Parables: Kingdom Lessons
Jesus' parables offer profound insights into the nature of God's kingdom and how we should live as followers of Christ. These "earthly stories with heavenly meanings" serve multiple purposes in revealing spiritual truths and teaching practical lessons for Christian life.
Purpose of Parables
Jesus spoke in parables for specific reasons that his disciples noticed and questioned. When they asked, "Why do you speak to them in parables?" (Jesus' Stories - "Parables' Purpose", 4:28), Jesus provided a two-part answer that reveals the deeper purpose of these stories.
(Jesus' Stories - "Parables' Purpose", 2:27) A very simple definition of parables is "a earthly story with a heavenly meaning." They're really extended similes and metaphors that communicate spiritual truths through familiar, everyday situations.
Revealing Our Spiritual Condition
Jesus explained that parables function like thermometers rather than thermostats. (Jesus' Stories - "Parables' Purpose", 15:56) Parables are really like thermometers - they don't cause a spiritual condition but reveal the condition that already exists. (Jesus' Stories - "Parables' Purpose", 17:46) Jesus spoke in parables to reveal our spiritual condition and to reveal that it's only by divine revelation that we understand who Jesus is and what he's done.
In Matthew 13:11, Jesus tells his disciples: "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given." These "secrets" or "mysteries" are theological truths that can only be revealed by divine revelation, not deduced through human reason.
Divine Revelation, Not Human Decision
(Jesus' Stories - "Parables' Purpose", 21:23) He spoke in parables to reveal our spiritual condition and to reveal that it's only by divine revelation that we understand who Jesus is. It's only by divine revelation that we trust in Jesus.
By nature, we all have spiritual heart disease, hearing problems, and sight problems. (Jesus' Stories - "Parables' Purpose", 19:21) Jesus Christ died on the cross and bore all of our sin - the sin of thought and word and deed, what we've done and what we've left undone. Through his shed blood, we are reconciled to God and forgiven.
Faith is not a decision we make on our own initiative, but (Jesus' Stories - "Parables' Purpose", 20:38) the gracious action of God that turns us into lovers of him. And only he can do that.
Lessons About Waiting and Trust
One of the most challenging aspects of kingdom living is learning to wait with confidence in God's timing and power. The parable of the growing seed in Mark 4:26-29 teaches us about patient waiting.
The Farmer's Confident Waiting
(Waiting - "Confidant Waiting", 3:25) Jesus said the kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground. The farmer in this parable demonstrates remarkable peace during the waiting process.
(Waiting - "Confidant Waiting", 5:46) Notice what's absent here - what's absent with this farmer that sows the seed. What's absent is any kind of fretting with regard to the crop. We don't read that the farmer was fretting about whether or not there would be a good crop. He just plants a seed and waits.
The farmer (Waiting - "Confidant Waiting", 7:11) got up in the morning, went to sleep at night, went about his things. He just waited. He didn't understand the germination process - that remained a mystery - but he trusted the process.
The Challenge of Waiting for Others' Faith
(Waiting - "Confidant Waiting", 10:08) I think of that type of waiting where you're waiting for the reign and rule to come in the heart of your loved one or friend or a neighbor or a work associate, where you're waiting for them to become a citizen in the kingdom through faith. That can be hard to wait.
When we're waiting for loved ones to come to faith, we're tempted to: - Fret over the outcome - Try to "pull" faith out of people ourselves - Doubt the power of the gospel seed - Think we need to perfect our witnessing technique
(Waiting - "Confidant Waiting", 23:52) Beloved, you can't change them. But we can do what we're called to do and that is share the gospel of Jesus Christ, because it's through the sharing of the gospel of Jesus Christ that God uses to bring people to faith.
Freedom Through God's Word
The good news is that God's Word has inherent power. (Waiting - "Confidant Waiting", 15:11) As Isaiah 55:10-11 promises: "For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they've watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout... So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty. It shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it."
(Waiting - "Confidant Waiting", 16:33) Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3:6-7: "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything but only God who gives the growth." We are freed from thinking that we're the ones that pull up the crop out of the heart.
Living While We Wait
(Waiting - "Confidant Waiting", 19:06) Something to do while we're waiting - live in the freedom. The freedom that we're the seed sowers, we're not the harvest makers. To live in the freedom that he's God, we're not.
As we wait for God to work in others' hearts: - Remember that God's Word will accomplish His purposes - Trust in the power of the gospel, not our presentation - Continue faithfully sowing seeds through sharing Christ - Rest in the knowledge that only God can change hearts
(Waiting - "Confidant Waiting", 20:30) One day when we're in heaven, we'll see the final harvest. We'll see the extent of it, the breadth of it. There will be amongst the throngs, the multitudes, and we'll see with our own eyes what God has been up to through the centuries.
The Heart of the Gospel in Parables
The parable of the Good Samaritan reveals profound truths about our spiritual condition and God's solution. When a lawyer asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus turned the question back to the law.
Our Impossible Situation
(Obtaining Eternal Life- "The Test", 7:35) The lawyer correctly quoted Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself." But this presents us with an impossible standard.
The parable of the Good Samaritan shows us that we are more like the man beaten and left for dead than like the Samaritan who rescues. We are spiritually dead, unable to help ourselves, in desperate need of rescue.
Jesus as Our Good Samaritan
In this parable, Jesus is the Good Samaritan who finds us beaten and dying on the roadside of life. He provides everything we need: - Immediate care (His sacrifice for our sins) - Ongoing provision (His continued intercession) - Complete payment (His righteousness credited to us)
The Parable of the Sower: Understanding Our Soil
The parable of the sower in Matthew 13:3-23 reveals both personal and missional truths about how God's Word works in our hearts and through our lives.
The Seed and the Soil
(Rooted, 5:22) The seed is the word of God. And notice that in this parable, the seed is the same. The seed that is scattered is the exact same seed. The sower does not take seed from one pouch and plant it or scatter it and then take from another pouch and plant or scatter it.
The problem is never with the seed, for (Rooted, 6:06) as Psalm 18 tells us, this God, his way is perfect. The promise of the Lord proves true. In the NIV translation of this verse, it says that God's word is flawless.
Recognizing Our Soil Conditions
The parable describes four types of soil, and we must honestly examine which condition describes our hearts:
The Path: (Rooted, 3:31) A path is soil that has been walked on. It's trodden down. It's hardened. It's packed. It's hard to penetrate. The seed just sits on top and really doesn't do anything.
The Rocky Ground: (Rooted, 3:48) There is absolutely no nutrient retention. The seed may start to take hold, but it really isn't rooted. It doesn't have any nutrients that it's gaining from the soil. And plants really cannot thrive because there's nothing for them to grow on.
Among Thorns: (Rooted, 4:16) That's the soil that's covered with thorns. It's this aggressive, deep-rooted weeds that surround the seeds. It's a very competitive soil where the strongest weed will win out over any other plant.
Our Spiritual Condition
(Rooted, 11:41) When we read the parable of the sower, the parable that so many of us are very familiar with, we read of these first three soils and we thank the Lord that we are not them. But we must honestly confess our own soil conditions.
(Rooted, 12:01) Confessions that we have been deaf to your call to serve as Christ served us. We have not been true to the mind of Christ. We have grieved your Holy Spirit... Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, our exploitation of other people, our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves.
(Rooted, 13:13) And we realize that we all experience the condition of a soil that is not right for planting, not right for growth, not right for a ripe and rich harvest.
God's Work in Making Good Soil
(Rooted, 15:53) Christ comes to us in his word, the word of God being the one who sows the seed. And he comes to us and he says, "I will create in you a clean heart. I will renew in you a right spirit. I will prepare your soil, the soil of your heart, so that my word will go forth."
(Rooted, 16:33) It is God. It is God who sows the seed. It is God who prepares our hearts. It is God who roots the seed within us and grows the seed from us.
The Missional Purpose
(Rooted, 19:32) Because as we are rooted in God's word, as his word grows in us, then what? Now what? Just as a seed grows and repopulates itself and it carries further seed along the wind, the same goes forth. The same is true for God's word in us.
(Rooted, 20:05) And in a missional purpose, God uses us as his sowers. He uses us to also scatter the seed.
Peacemaking as Kingdom Living
The call to be peacemakers in Matthew 5:9 reflects Jesus as the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6) and our calling to live as His children.
Understanding Our Natural State
(Blessings in Disguise Lesson 4, 4:39) Notice the words here that are applied to us: we are weak, we are ungodly, we are sinners, and we are born enemies of God. In other words, by nature we do not want peace with God. We don't want God at all.
Yet (Blessings in Disguise Lesson 4, 5:24) Jesus effected a peace with us even though by nature we didn't want that peace at all. So he affected not just a truce but he effected a peace with us.
The Gospel as Peacemaking
(Blessings in Disguise Lesson 4, 6:57) Sharing the gospel is the highest form of making peace. When we share the gospel with others, what it is we are communicating is the very peace that God has won for us through the Lord Jesus Christ.
This aligns with Isaiah 52:7: "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation."
Application for Today
The parables teach us that kingdom life requires both action and patient trust. We're called to faithfully plant seeds of the gospel while