Matthew 13:10-17, Judges 9:1-20
Once upon a time, a group of trees went
out to anoint for themselves a king. They looked around and then leaned their
branches in the direction of an olive tree, one from among their number, aiming
them at him like long pointy fingers. They moved in closer and closer, now
crowding the olive tree so much that they began to knock off some of its olives
to the ground. They said, “Olive tree, you
be our king.” The olive tree replied, “What, and give up providing my oil,
sought after throughout the world by regular men and by lords? This is my
purpose, to serve man in this way. I was never meant to rule over you. That is
God’s job. No thanks.”
The trees looked around again and this
time focused on a fig tree. Their branches began to move, and in a little while
no longer aimed at the olive tree but instead pointed to the fig tree. Again
they moved in closer and closer, now crowding the fig tree so much that some of
its figs also fell to the ground. As one, they all said, “Fig tree, you be our king.” The fig tree replied,
“What, and give up providing my tasty wonderful fruit loved throughout the
world? This is my purpose, to serve man in this way. I was never meant to rule
over you. That is God’s job. No thanks.”
The trees looked around yet again. They
looked up high, and then they looked down low. Looking close to the ground,
their focus now fixated on a grape vine. Their branches bent down as well until
they all pointed at this vine. Yet again they crowded the vine, almost
trampling it, breaking off a number of its clusters of grapes. They said,
“Grape vine, you be our king.” The
grape vine replied, “What, and give up providing my wine, which cheers men and
lords throughout the world (and makes them tipsy when they drink too much,
although that is not my fault)? This is my purpose, to serve man in this way. I
was never meant to rule over you. That is God’s job. No thanks.”
The trees looked around one more time.
They thought there was no one else to ask, until they noticed a small but tough,
scraggly-looking thornbush. Their branches began to move towards it. Once again
they began to crowd it, but this time the thornbush held its own; rather than
knocking something off the thornbush, when branch met branch it was the
thrornbush that did damage, creating long, ugly scars and gashes on the
branches of the other trees. Soon the other trees were so entangled with the
thornbush that they could not pull away even if they had tried. But they didn’t
try. Instead, they said, “Thornbush, you be
our king.” The thornbush replied, “If you really want me to be king over you,
come even closer, although I cannot promise that I won’t scratch you and harm
you and take your fruit more than I have already. (Actually, that is exactly
what I intend to do.) But if you change your mind, let me warn you: I may have
fire come out and consume you all, even the giant cedars!”
----
We all love a good story. Our culture is
absolutely enamored with storytelling. Movies, books, television – I am certain
that we consume many, many times more stories than any past culture or
civilization. Why are stories so powerful? Why do we love them so much? They
capture our imagination; they speak to our hearts; they stir things in us,
longings, hopes, even fears, in ways that no “direct” approach ever could.
In some stories, the story is the story;
that is, the very events and actions of the story are the, well, the whole
story. But in other stories, there are layers. There are deeper meanings,
available to those open and willing to reflect on things. Parables are short stories that do this.
I really like what John MacArthur has to say about parables: “Now, what is a
parable? Parabolē. It really means para, meaning
alongside. It means to lay something alongside something else, so to
place something alongside something else so that a comparison can be
made. That’s basically what it came to mean, a comparison or an
illustration. You have a spiritual truth that may be hard to be
understood. You lay alongside of it a physical, earthly story which gives
understanding to that spiritual truth. That is a parable. The term parabolē
is used in the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, 45 times, which indicates
to us that it was a very common form of Jewish teaching. It is an extended
comparison. It is taking something very, very external, very observable,
very objective, very earthly and laying it alongside something spiritual,
supernatural, heavenly and subjective so that one helps you to understand the
other. I guess you could sum it up by saying it’s an earthly story with a
heavenly meaning. That is a parable.”
So even the word for parable is itself somewhat parabolic! This picture of
someone laying something alongside so that we would understand the first thing
better is powerful to me, especially when I realize the “someone” is God
Himself.
This leads me to another quote about parables, this one from Richard
Chenevix Trench, who wrote in the 1800s: “[Parables] assist to make the truth
intelligible; analogies from the natural world […] are arguments, and may be
called as witnesses, the world of Nature being throughout a witness for the
world of spirit, proceeding from the same hand, growing from the same root, and
being constituted for the same end. All lovers of truth readily acknowledge
these mysterious harmonies, and the forces of arguments derived from them.”
If you think deeply on this you may start
to wonder about some mind blowing things. We went to the plant sale at the
Botanical Garden yesterday, and as I was thinking about this message and
parables in general, I wondered about why God made plants and their whole
growing from seed thing the way He did. Could it be that plants grow from seeds
primarily so that Jesus could give
His multiple parables involving seeds?
Now sometimes, even when a story has a
deeper meaning, we simply don’t see it. As a child, I absolutely fell in love
with C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series of
books. I read them over and over. To this day there is no work of literature
that I have read more times than the seven Narnia
books. But although I loved them, I had no idea what they really were about. It
was some time after I was saved, after I became a believer in graduate school
that I began to think back on the books, and I was suddenly and forcefully
struck by the realization that these seven books were entirely about Christ, really. I was blown away. Back then I
felt kind of foolish for not realizing it earlier, but now I think the real
reason was worse than foolishness; it was a willful blindness, a refusal to
open my eyes, a determination to remain shallow, a pride in myself that
actually made me stupid; C.S. Lewis in Narnia
writes about all the talking beasts and how if they act like the dumb
non-talking beasts long enough, they can actually revert and become them –
well, that too was parabolic speech, and I now think I was well on my way to
becoming, spiritually speaking, one of those non-talking beasts myself.
I have long identified with what
the University of Texas professor J. Budziszewski writes in “Escape from
Nihilism,” his account of how he came to faith in Christ. He first points out
that some people flee from God by robbing and even killing; others may do drugs
or fall into sexual sin. But, he writes, “when I fled from God I didn’t do any
of those things; my way of fleeing was to get stupid.” He goes on to say, “Visualize
a man opening up the access panels of his mind and pulling out all the components
that have God's image stamped on them. The problem is that they all have God's
image stamped on them, so the man can never stop. No matter how much he pulls
out, there's still more to pull. I was that man. Because I pulled out more and
more, there was less and less that I could think about. But because there was
less and less that I could think about, I thought I was becoming more and more focused.
Because I believed things that filled me with dread, I thought I was smarter
and braver than the people who didn't believe them. I thought I saw an emptiness
at the heart of the universe that was hidden from their foolish eyes. Of course
I was the fool.” Later he writes, and I identify with this as well, “The next
few years after my conversion were like being in a dark attic where I had been
for a long time, but in which shutter after shutter was being thrown back so that
great shafts of light began to stream in and illuminate the dusty corners. I recovered
whole memories, whole feelings, whole ways of understanding that I had blocked
out.”
My hope and prayer for us in this series
is that something like this would happen to all of us, even those of us who are
believers. My prayer is that as we study the parables of Christ, we would not
just have our ears tickled but our hearts pierced. Jesus didn’t tell His
parables to atheists, but to Jews, to people who at least said they believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These
were people and who believed that
they believed in Him. But they had let themselves grow dumb. They became
comfortable with their distance from God. My prayer is that we would be shaken
from our complacence and comfort, that shutter after shutter would be thrown
back and that, unlike Toad in last week’s drama who went back to bed after
being temporarily blinded by the intensity of the sun after a long slumber, we
would enter the light and let God really speak
truth individually to us, that we would really
allow Him to change our thinking, our actions, our entire lives.
Now please don’t misunderstand me; it’s
not that I think we are a bunch of total fakes who don’t follow Christ at all;
I think entirely the opposite! But I do think we all have areas that we hold
Him back, areas that we don’t let Him in. My prayer is that as we explore
Christ’s parables, we would finally let Him in everywhere.
Now I have two passages I want us to focus
on today. The first of these is in Matthew 13. To give a little context, I want
to start with the first part of Matthew 13:3, which simply says,
Then He told them many things in parables, saying: -
Matt. 13:3a
Any time spent in the gospels will show
you that Jesus used parable after parable, again and again, when speaking to the
people that gathered around Him. Just in this one chapter, Matthew 13, is the
parable of the sower, the parable of the weeds, the parable of the mustard
seed, the parable of the yeast, the
parable of the hidden treasure, the parable of the pearl, and the parable of
the net. And so it is not perhaps surprising that in Matthew 13:10 we have the
following:
The disciples came to
Him and asked, “Why do You speak to the people in parables?” – Matt. 13:10
This is an important question. Was it to make truth, especially abstract
truth, easier to understand? Was it so that they would remember the lesson
better? Was it simply so that more people would pay attention? You have to
admit that I had your attention at the beginning of this message. Was it so
that the topics would hit home, hit people personally more? Although I think
these are all real benefits of teaching with parables, none of them are the
answer Jesus gives in Matthew 13. Here is Jesus’ answer:
He replied, “Because the knowledge of the
secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given
more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they
have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to
them in parables: Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not
hear or understand. – Matt. 13:11-13
Now it is important to really understand this answer. It’s
not that Jesus is saying that from now on, nobody will ever get to understand
and come into faith again; that goes against the whole point of why Christ came
and died on the cross. It was because He loves us.
The best and most succinct answer I have seen is from a
commentary on the website Stackexchange (http://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/14863/what-does-matthew-1311-12-mean):
“The basic idea is that when Jesus
spoke in parables, they were great in drawing people with open hearts to Him
while driving those with hard hearts into deep confusion. Parables were a
common mode of teaching among the Rabbis, but Christ used them in such a way
that heaven shined down upon the most mundane every day practices of life. He
also used them almost exclusively, which was not normal at all. Especially the
more people began to reject Him, the more He spoke strictly in parables and His
parables took a greater tone of warning. They were deeply illuminating to the
heart open to God. They were foolish nonsense, provoking mad frustration to
those hard of heart. Therefore, they had a winnowing effect. They divided
people. Some were left asking questions, seeking and knocking, others left
stumbling and cursing questions.
“In general, Christ's parables spoke
about the nature of His kingdom. How one was in it, or not, based on their
nature, which would eventually show itself good or bad. Everything was about
the nature of a person, not their works, but a good nature would grow up good,
and a bad nature [would] grow up bad. To enter into this kingdom of life, one
had to believe in Christ, receive His seed, believe His word and be a new
creature. In the end, the bad creatures, weeds, fish, would be tossed, burned,
weep and gnash their teeth, etc. The good creatures by virtue of their being in
the kingdom, would be congratulated, rewarded, etc. The language was vague
enough to confuse anyone who was self-righteous not knowing they needed faith
and re-birth, but anyone who longed for forgiveness and felt the strings of
their heart moved and warmed by Him whose words were eternal life, the same
were drawn in.
“We can see this play out as when
Christ started to say things hard to understand and receive, such as the need
'to eat His flesh', it was too much for many and they left Him. The disciples
were also confused but their hearts were drawn in and they could not leave Him.
“In
other words that which was a blessing to those open to God became judicial in
judgment to those who were not open to God. Like a magical filter His parables
bought His sheep into the gate, and closed it in confusion to those who were
not His sheep. His sheep were introduced into the gospel obtaining an eternal
new birth. His enemies had no idea of anything he said and thought it was just
meaningless babel. Even the form of knowledge they had of God was taken away
when rejecting Christ, leaving them […] in utter confusion.”
Jesus went on to say:
In them is fulfilled
the prophecy of Isaiah: You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you
will be ever seeing but never perceiving. 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. – Matt. 13:14-15
So this confirms that it was not that Jesus was arbitrarily
shutting some people out; the use of parables didn’t keep out anyone who truly
had repentant hearts, who was open to the wooing of the Spirit.
I believe the same is true today when it comes to reading
the Bible. For someone closed to God, reading the Bible is just confusion and
confirms their biases that it is all foolishness. But to someone open to the
Spirit of God, the Bible is unlike any other book; it has boundless wisdom, it
speaks straight to your heart, it leaves you different than when you started. I
still remember reading the Bible for the first time in graduate school,
starting in Genesis 1. My heart was pretty closed all through Genesis the first
time I read it, and I thought it was nonsense. But something happened somewhere
in Exodus; I finally began to become humble (or humbled might be a better
word); I saw myself in those sinful Israelites in the desert, and the Bible
began to come wondrously alive to me.
The passage Jesus quotes is Isaiah 6:9-10. Interestingly, it
is Isaiah’s commission by God; it comes immediately after Isaiah had the vision
of the Lord and the Seraphim, when Isaiah cried “Woe to me; I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live
among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord
Almighty.”
Jesus is the King!
There can be no king but Jesus, or you will ruin your life. It is fascinating
to think about how the King is quoting this verse, this vision, of Himself!
Recall that the Seraphim took the coal to Isaiah’s lips, explained that
Isaiah’s guilt was taken away, his sin was atoned for, a foreshadowing of
Christ’s work on the cross. And then he asked who will go, and Isaiah said,
“Send me!” And the message? This very message!
Humility, a contrite heart, a genuine hunger for God – these
things are necessary if we really are to approach God. We can’t come to Him
thinking that we can do it in our own righteousness, our own strength. These
things are antithetical to knowing God. We know these things in our heads; but
I am afraid we sometimes forget them in our hearts. The parables are one way
that God reminds us. Not understanding the Bible is one way God sometimes
reminds us. Feeling like God is distant from us is one way that God sometimes
reminds us. Feeling overwhelmed by the challenges of life is one way that God
sometimes reminds us. He reminds us because He loves us. When He closes Himself
to us it is because He loves us.
But blessed are your
eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, 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. 13:16-17
We aren’t left there. These words bring such joy to my heart! If you are a
believer, how blessed you are! To know God’s love, to experience His Spirit, to
grow because of Him, to be a part of His work here on Earth – these are all
tremendous blessings available to us in Christ.
I opened with a story; now I want to tell
you the rest of the story. This story actually was my personal enhancement of a
story found in Scripture, a true parable not in the Gospels, not in the New
Testament at all, but in the book of Judges. I want to read it to you
unadorned, straight from Scripture.
Let me start by giving you a little
background. The Israelites have taken the Promised Land. Up until this time the
Israelites had not had a king. Having a king was not forbidden, but Moses (led
by God) had given the Israelites warnings; including that it must be the person
the Lord chooses, it must be a fellow Israelite, not a foreigner, and the king
must not acquire wealth or many wives.
Well, in the time of the judges, Gideon
was used by God as a military leader. The people then decided
they wanted him to be king. At this time, he had one son. But Gideon said “I
will not rule over you, nor will my son rule over you. The Lord will rule over
you.” So far so good, right? Do you hear echoes of my opening story?
But Gideon also
asked that each person give them an earring from their share of the plunder of
the Ishmaelites. They did so happily, and it came to be a huge bounty,
violating one of the warnings in Deuteronomy for kings. Gideon made the gold
into an ephod (like a vest) which he placed in his home town. But then the
Israelites went there to worship it, and “it became a snare to Gideon and his
family.”
The problems didn’t end here; Gideon (also
called Jerub-Baal) went on to marry many wives (another thing kings were told
not to do) and had 70 sons. He also had a concubine who gave him a son that he
named Abimelek which means – are you ready for this? – my father is king!
After Gideon died, Abimelek went to his
mother’s family and asked them whether it was better to have the 70 sons of
Gideon to rule over them or whether it was better that he, Abimelek, do so?
After all, he said, he was related to them; plus, he was just one man. The
people agreed with Abimelek and gave him money that he used to hire bad people
who became his followers. He then went to his father’s hometown and killed all
70 sons of Gideon, all but one, Jotham, the youngest son, who escaped. Then the
people went to crown Abimelek king. We pick up the story in Judges 9:7.
When Jotham was told
about this, he climbed up on the top of Mount Gerizim and shouted to them,
“Listen to me, citizens of Shechem, so that God may listen to you. One day the trees went out
to anoint a king for themselves. They said to the olive tree, ‘Be our king.’
“But the olive tree answered, ‘Should I give up my oil, by which both gods and
humans are honored, to hold sway over the trees?’ – Judges 9:7-9
“Next, the trees said
to the fig tree, ‘Come and be our king.’ “But the fig tree
replied, ‘Should I give up my fruit, so good and sweet, to hold sway over the
trees?’ “Then the trees said to the vine, ‘Come and be our
king.’ “But the vine answered, ‘Should I give up my wine,
which cheers both gods and humans, to hold sway over the trees?’ – Judges
9:10-13
“Finally all the
trees said to the thornbush, ‘Come and be our king.’ “The
thornbush said to the trees, ‘If you really want to anoint me king over you,
come and take refuge in my shade; but if not, then let fire come out of the
thornbush and consume the cedars of Lebanon!’ – Judges 9:14-15
“Have you acted
honorably and in good faith by making Abimelek king? Have you been fair to
Jerub-Baal [Gideon] and his family? Have you treated him as he deserves? Remember that my father
fought for you and risked his life to rescue you from the hand of Midian.
But today you have revolted against my father’s family. You
have murdered his seventy sons on a single stone and have made Abimelek, the
son of his female slave, king over the citizens of Shechem because he is
related to you. – Judges 9:16-18
So have you acted
honorably and in good faith toward Jerub-Baal and his family today? If you
have, may Abimelek be your joy, and may you be his, too! But if you have not, let
fire come out from Abimelek and consume you, the citizens of Shechem and Beth
Millo, and let fire come out from you, the citizens of Shechem and Beth Millo,
and consume Abimelek!” – Judges 9:19-20
So here we have an Old Testament parable,
and it is pretty clearly explained. I share it in part to show you an example
of an Old Testament parable, to point out that Jesus didn’t invent parables,
although He did take them to a whole new level.
But I also share it because it vividly
reveals man’s nature and desire to have any king but God. Jesus and only Jesus
should be our king. In this section of Judges, the people struggled with this –
and failed, Gideon struggled with this – and failed, and Abimelek struggled
with this – and failed. What a contrast to Isaiah, who said, “Woe
to me; I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people
of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the
King, the Lord Almighty.” We should have no king but Jesus. Not ourselves, not
our careers, not our material desires, not our own comfort. Remember Jesus’
quote from Isaiah: For this people’s
heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed
their eyes. Is there even a hint of this in your life? Who or what is
really your king? Hear with your ears! Open your eyes! If Jesus is not on the
throne of your life right now, ask Him to return to His rightful place! He is
not the thornbush you have put there; He is the very Tree of Life. Even if for
a long time He has been your Redeemer, your Savior, let Him now be your King.
No comments:
Post a Comment