Jesus and His Parables

Thoughts From a Bible Reader

Jesus used a lot of parables when He taught, although how He used them changed drastically. Initially, He used them the way that we use analogies in our discussions, using them to illustrate points that He had made. You are the salt of the earth. You are a light on a hill. Doing what I am telling you to do is like building your house on a rock, while not doing so is like building your house on sand. But then His parables changed from illustrations of points that He was making as He taught, to the parables being all that He said, with no teaching to connect them to. The parable became the lesson itself. Why? The Bible doesn’t specifically say, but there is a pattern that I noticed long ago, an escalation that we can see, that seems to have been the trigger for the change. We’ll look at that today.

After His baptism, His temptation in the wilderness, His giving the Sermon on the Mount, and His healing ministry having begun, Jesus began to draw a lot of attention. And then, in Matthew 9, a paralyzed man was brought by his friends to Jesus to be healed. And, instead of healing him right away, we are told that “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Have courage, son! Your sins are forgiven.’ Then some of the experts in the law said to themselves, ‘This man is blaspheming!’ When Jesus perceived their thoughts he said, ‘Why do you respond with evil in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, “Your sins are forgiven” or to say, “Stand up and walk”? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—then he said to the paralytic—‘Stand up, take your stretcher, and go home.’ So he stood up and went home. When the crowd saw this, they were afraid and honored God who had given such authority to men” (Matt. 9:2-8). And with this event the grumbling of the religious leaders of Israel began, accusing Jesus of blasphemy, even if they were only doing the grumbling in their own hearts and minds. Even so, Jesus knew.

The very next thing that Matthew the writer tells us about is Jesus meeting Matthew the tax collector (who many assume are one and the same, although we don’t know for certain) and calling him to follow. “As Jesus was having a meal in Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’” (Matt. 9:10-11). He blasphemes, He hangs out with horrible people, the grumbling continues, but this time it’s spoken out loud, even though they weren’t willing to say it right to Jesus’ face, but rather would only say it to His disciples.

And then John’s disciples came to grumble (although we’re not told that John sent them) because both they and the Pharisees, they said, fasted often, but Jesus’ disciples didn’t fast. And Jesus responded to them that you don’t mourn when you’re with the bridegroom, you celebrate. And you don’t try to force new things into adopting old ways, such as putting a new patch on old clothes, or new wine in an old wineskin, or something is just going to go wrong (Matt. 9:14-17, some of those parables that Jesus used to illustrate a point that He was making).

Later, a mute man, possessed by a demon, was brought to Jesus. “After the demon was cast out, the man who had been mute began to speak. The crowds were amazed and said, ‘Never has anything like this been seen in Israel!’ But the Pharisees said, ‘By the ruler of demons he casts out demons!’” (Matt. 9:33-34). The grumbling of the religious leaders was turning into accusations, even when faced with a really incredible miracle, definitely something that you don’t see every day, or every year, or even once in your lifetime, or maybe even in the whole history of Israel!

The next grumbling came on a Sabbath, as Jesus and His disciples walked through a grainfield and plucked heads of grain to eat (and not to put them in a barn for later). The Pharisees accused them all of violating the Sabbath law by harvesting grain on the Sabbath. Jesus’ response was that King David himself had violated the law when he and those with him ate the sacred bread in the tabernacle that was only for the priests when they were hungry, and also that the priests themselves worked in the temple on the sabbath but were not blamed for doing so. And then He told them that “the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Matt. 12:8), before going into the synagogue of those Pharisees. “A man was there who had a withered hand. And they asked Jesus, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?’ so that they could accuse him. He said to them, ‘Would not any one of you, if he had one sheep that fell into a pit on the Sabbath, take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.’ Then he said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand. He stretched it out and it was restored, as healthy as the other. But the Pharisees went out and plotted against him, as to how they could assassinate him” (Matt. 12:10-14). The Pharisees most certainly knew that one of the people in their synagogue was crippled. And, instead of caring for that man, they were simply willing to use him as a tool against Jesus. And after addressing their hypocrisy, Jesus healed the man. And so they decided that He must die.

Then, later, a man who was both blind and mute was brought to Jesus, and He healed him. The crowds who saw this were amazed, and cried out, “Could this one be the Son of David?” (Matt. 12:23). But the Pharisees, in spite of the fact that a man who had been both blind and mute was now before them, able to both see and talk, claimed that Jesus was using the power of Beelzebul, the ruler of demons, to do the works that He was doing. Jesus responded by calling them out on this accusation, and then told them, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. For this reason I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is known by its fruit. Offspring of vipers! How are you able to say anything good, since you are evil? For the mouth speaks from what fills the heart. The good person brings good things out of his good treasury, and the evil person brings evil things out of his evil treasury. I tell you that on the day of judgment, people will give an account for every worthless word they speak. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matt. 12:30-37).

Jesus really drew a line in the sand here. Either you are with me, or you’re not. And if the things that I’m doing are happening because of the work of the Holy Spirit, you are putting yourself in danger of never, ever being forgiven if you speak against the Spirit’s work in doing these miracles. You can say what you want to about me, but know that you will be held accountable for what you say against the work of the Spirit. So you need to decide if you’re going to be good trees, bearing good fruit from a good heart, or continue being bad trees that bear bad fruit from bad hearts. And know that, on the day when you are judged, your own words will either justify you, or they will condemn you.

And then the scribes and Pharisees asked for Jesus to do some sort of sign for them. As if healing a deaf and mute person wasn’t sign enough? He refuses to, and rebukes them for their unbelief. At this point His mom and brothers show up outside of the house, wanting to talk with Him. He says that it is the people who do the Father’s will who are truly His brother, His sister, and His mother.

And that leads right into, “On that day after Jesus went out of the house, he sat by the lake. And such a large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat to sit while the whole crowd stood on the shore. He told them many things in parables” (Matt. 13:1-3). This is it. This is where Jesus began to use parables in a different way, after the Pharisees had moved from grumbling about His claim to be able to forgive sins, to plotting to see Him dead, to accusing Him of working from Satanic power. On that day a line had been crossed, and something had changed.

His disciples were confused. “Then the disciples came to him and said, ‘Why do you speak to them in parables?’ He replied, ‘You have been given the opportunity to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but they have not. For whoever has will be given more, and will have an abundance. But whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. For this reason I speak to them in parables: Although they see they do not see, and although they hear they do not hear nor do they understand. And concerning them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says:

“You will listen carefully yet will never understand,
you will look closely yet will never comprehend.
For the heart of this people has become dull;
they are hard of hearing,
and they have shut their eyes,
so that they would not see with their eyes
and hear with their ears
and understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.”

But your eyes are blessed because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it’” (Matt. 13:10-17).

Why do I think that the Pharisees and others had to deal with parables that they could not understand? Because they were already ignoring what they could plainly see. Blind people could see. Deaf people could hear. Paralyzed people were made whole. The demon-possessed were freed. And was that not enough to amaze them, even though it amazed people all around them? Their hearts truly were dull and hard, if they could pass over such incredible miracles and not be moved by them, feeling that Jesus still had to give them some sort of sign to convince them. They were unwilling to hear the truth that Jesus spoke to them. They definitely shut their own eyes to the revelation of God’s kingdom all around them seen in the acts of Jesus. Why? Because, as Isaiah had said, in their hearts they really didn’t want to see, or hear, or understand. They did not want to turn to God. And, if only they would have finally be willing to turn to Him, I am certain that He would have healed them.

I think that the parables were also, in a way, a subversive way for Jesus to eventually reach some of these hard-hearted Pharisees. Some of them, I think, may have been engaged by these stories in a way that they would not have if Jesus had simply said the truths contained in them out loud. No, instead they had to mull them over, puzzle them out, and if the meaning behind the story finally became plain to them, I’m sure that Jesus would be far away, out of range for them to argue with Him. And so they would be left to simply mull over His words. And maybe some of them finally fully understood what Jesus had said, and came to God to be healed of their hard-heartedness. And some other parables, as we will see, were used by Jesus like a well-placed dagger, accusations against the Jewish religious leaders that they didn’t understand until it was too late to argue and complain.`

Matthew goes on to say, “Jesus spoke all these things in parables to the crowds; he did not speak to them without a parable. This fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet: ‘I will open my mouth in parables, I will announce what has been hidden from the foundation of the world’” (Matt. 13:34-35). Parables became Jesus’ new normal in speaking to crowds (although with the disciples, He still used them to illustrate points that He was making to them). Next time we will start looking at the parables themselves.

Do you have questions or comments that you would like to share with me? Feel free to drop me an email (stevesuterfaithandfruit@gmail.com).

My posts come from my observations in reading the Bible literally dozens of times, always hoping to understand it a little bit better. If you want to go back and read more of what I’ve observed in my reading, click here.

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