The Purpose for Parables

Trying to pit stories against doctrine is an impossibility biblically because wherever there's a story, there's a doctrine. Separating Jesus' stories from propositional doctrinal truth is the nonsense of postmodern language deconstruction. Why would postmodernists want to deconstruct language?

Because they don't like what the Bible says. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. They are some of history's best-known tales, with simple narratives that even a child in Sunday School can grasp. I'm talking about the parables that Jesus taught. But if the parables are so popular and so simple, why would John MacArthur say their true meaning is often missed?

Find out today on Grace to You as John MacArthur begins his series titled Stories with Purpose. Now John, this study you're about to begin will cover some of the most famous parables Jesus told, but I know that you'd say that just because these stories are familiar doesn't mean that their true meanings are well known. Just because the stories are familiar does not mean their meaning is well known. In fact, I would venture to say that generally speaking, the parables of our Lord are not understood. Let me shock you. He told them for the purpose of hiding truth.

How about that? Most people think, well, Jesus told stories because it makes everything clear. No, he told stories because it hides things.

A story without an explanation is a riddle that can't be solved. But for those of us who believe, the stories do illustrate, powerfully illustrate divine truth. We're going to look at the parables together in this series. Its title is Stories with Purpose, Unlocking the Parables of Jesus. This is fundamental, indispensable truth concerning salvation and the kingdom of God. In all, Jesus told close to 40 parables.

Simple in one sense, profound in another sense. And in this study, we're going to cover some of the most famous parables, the Good Samaritan, the Rich Fool, the Wedding Feast, the Dishonest Manager, and some others. So over the next three weeks, we're going to go into Jesus' stories and find their divine purpose, profound insight from our Lord Jesus into salvation and his kingdom. Stay with us for Stories with Purpose.

Yes, do. And now, friend, John's going to kick off this series here on Grace To You with a lesson on why Christ used parables. And his reason may surprise you. Follow along in your Bibles as John MacArthur unlocks these stories with purpose.

And now, here's John. I just want to talk about the issue of the parables, okay? Talking about the parables is really important. It actually is a parable that Jesus told during the middle of his Passion Week that ignited the final fire, or it could say poured gasoline on the fire. Chapter 11 of John ends with the leaders of Israel wanting to seize him. And you move into the middle of the week, and he tells a parable recorded in Mark 12. And the end of that parable says the same thing.

They were looking for a way to seize him. It really was a combination of the raising of Lazarus and the telling of that parable that precipitated the human activity that led to his execution. People don't understand parables. There is a lot of very sloppy thinking about parables and a very high degree of sloppy preaching about parables. So I want you to understand parables, not just in some kind of isolated way, but they play a critical role in the rejection of Jesus Christ right up into the very final week of His life. How are we to understand the parables of Jesus?

There are about 40 of them. They're only in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. No parable is in John. How are we to understand the role that parables play, and what are we dealing with? To help us get rid of the sloppy thinking about parables, I want to go to the 13th chapter of Matthew. And so we're going to go back in time from being right on the brink of Passion Week.

Lazarus most likely was raised from the dead the week before Passion Week. So we're going to back up. We're going to back up about a year in the ministry of the Lord to get a perspective and understand better what led to his rejection and execution. I want you to go to Matthew chapter 13, and we're going to look at this chapter kind of from above.

We'll land on a few places throughout the chapter without reading every bit of it. But I want to start out at the outset in verses 1, 2, and 3, Matthew 13. And the first two words are important, that day, that day. I want to stop there for a minute to say this is a day like no other day. This is a day in which a dramatic transformation takes place in the teaching of Jesus. This is a day with an epic shift. This is a day that is ominous in every sense. It is abrupt. It is a startling day. It is a shocking day.

In and of itself, the events that happened that day would be enough. But there is a turning point in the entire ministry of Jesus on this one day. It happens to be a Sabbath day toward the end of his second year of his ministry. And you remember that second year was in Galilee, so we're at the end of his second year of ministry in Galilee.

So we're backing up about a year from his death. That day, Jesus went out of the house sitting by the sea, the lake of Galilee, and large crowds, as always, gathered to Him. So He got into a boat and sat down and the whole crowd was standing on the beach.

He did this because it allowed Him to move back from the crowd that otherwise would crush Him and make His voice a little better heard as it bounced off the water of the lake. But then in verse 3, and He spoke many things to them in parables, saying, He spoke many things to them in parables on this day. And by the way, from this day on, whenever He taught in public, He spoke in parables from this day on.

This is a huge shift. Up to this day, He did not speak in parables. There are no parables in the Sermon on the Mount, for example, which is the most extensive illustration of His sermon. There is an illustration at the end about a flood and houses built on sand and rock, but there is no parable.

But from here on, He always speaks in parables. What is a parable? It's a word picture. It's an elongated simile or metaphor.

It can be relatively short or it can be relatively long. Para means to lay alongside. So it is a story laid alongside a truth to demonstrate their parallel realities.

Some of you will remember when you were in college finding out about a parabola, two curved lines that mirror each other perfectly. That's a parable. Jesus began this day to speak in parables.

That's a monumental change. Up to this time, He has basically drawn from the Old Testament and given discourses based on Old Testament Scripture. He has propounded doctrines, theological truths. We would say propositional truth.

By propositional, I mean an absolute statement of fact. He has been a theological preacher, an expositional preacher. But now, all of a sudden, He becomes a storyteller. Now, this all gets launched on a Sabbath day. Now, Sabbath, you need to understand a little bit about Sabbath. Let me tell you what God's law was for the Sabbath.

This is going to be very complicated for you, so listen carefully. God's law for the Sabbath is this. Don't work, period. That's it. There was nothing more. Somebody says, well, I'm a Sabbatarian.

Well, really, what do you mean by that? I don't work, and then I don't do this, and then I don't do that, and I don't do that, and I don't go there, and I don't. That's not according to the law of God. God's law said, rest. Don't work.

Take a day off. That's the Sabbath. And it was intended, according to Isaiah 58, 13, to be a day of delight and a day of rest.

Well, we all understand the horrors of the history of Israel. After they were given the law of God, they virtually disobeyed it for centuries. Consequently, they ran roughshod over the Sabbath.

They didn't rest. They didn't delight in God. They didn't use it really as a day of worship. They broke the Sabbath. They broke the Sabbath year. They broke Sabbaths all the time.

Why? For money, for apostasy, for idolatry, for apathy and indifference. They violated the Sabbath. Well, eventually, the rabbis started becoming concerned about the violations of the Sabbath, so they wanted to protect the Sabbath. So in order to kind of recover the Sabbath and insulate the Sabbath against violations, they covered the Sabbath with endless rules. They couldn't just leave it to worship God, delight in God, take a day off, don't work, because people didn't respond to that. So they created a massive complex of Sabbath laws. By Jesus' time, the Sabbath is the most dreaded day of the week.

Every way you could cut it, it is a pain. It is not a day off. It is a day of all kinds of ridiculous encumbrances and burdens. The pendulum had swung from complete abandonment of the Sabbath to the establishment of a legalistic system. In fact, the whole Judaism self-righteousness legal system found kind of its symbol in the Sabbath. Well, Jesus loved to violate the Sabbath.

That was just another way that He attacked their self-righteous legalistic system. So we find Him in chapter 12, let's go back, on a Sabbath day. And He's walking through the green fields. He shouldn't be walking. His disciples shouldn't be walking. And then He's picking grain. He shouldn't be doing that.

That's harvesting. And He shouldn't be then consuming it. The Pharisees in verse 2 see this. Your disciples do what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath, not by any Old Testament law, not by any divine prescription, purely and simply because of the traditions that they had developed to replace the law of God. Jesus responds by telling about an incident in the Old Testament when David's men actually ate the showbread out of the temple to show how ridiculous their Sabbath rules had become.

A hunger was a greater priority than some rule. And then to add to it, in verse 8, He says something that just distresses them to the max. Don't tell me what to do on the Sabbath. The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. I'll decide what to do on the Sabbath.

I'm the Lord of the Sabbath. So, from there, after breakfasting by walking through the fields and plucking a little grain, He went into a synagogue, the man there with a withered hand. They questioned Jesus, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Which, of course, in their system it wasn't so that they might accuse Him. He says, What man is there among you who has a sheep and falls into a pit on the Sabbath?

Do not take hold of it and lift it out. How much more valuable then is a man than a sheep? He said to the man, Stretch out your hand. Verse 14, the Pharisees went out and conspired against Him as to how they might destroy Him. Destroy Him? Kill Him for violating their ridiculous Sabbath rules? Yes, because this was symbolic of His all-out wholesale assault on their self-righteous system.

They wanted to destroy Him. Same day, verse 22, a demon-possessed man is blind and mute, and brought to Jesus, he healed him. And the people were saying, This man can't be the son of David, can he? Is this the Messiah? When the Pharisees heard this, they said, This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons.

Whoa. Two years into His ministry, the final conclusion of the Pharisees, He does what He does by the powers of hell. He's inspired by Satan himself. That was their conclusion. If that's your conclusion, when you've had a full revelation of the Son of God, you're hopeless.

You are hopeless. And so verse 31 says, Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. When you blaspheme the Holy Spirit by saying that that which He has done through the Son of God is from hell, you're beyond the point of salvation. You could speak a word against the Son of Man. You could speak a word against Him, His humanness, His life.

That could be forgiven. But if your conclusion is that what the Holy Spirit has done through Him is from hell, you will not be forgiven. Divine condemnation, then down in verse 37, By your words you will be justified. On the other hand, by your words you will be condemned. Condemnation fell on this Sabbath day toward the end of the second year of our Lord's ministry. Divine condemnation. The day wasn't even over. It wasn't even over. At this point, you pick up the story.

You don't need to go to it. I'll just tell you. You pick up the story in Mark. And at this particular point, after this incredible conflict around the synagogue, Jesus gets into a boat, and with His disciples He goes across the north shore of the Sea of Galilee over to the eastern side. And when He brings them to the shore, a maniac comes running out of the caves, naked, demon-possessed, a legion of demons. Jesus confronts. You remember the man, and He had a friend as well, and takes the demons out of them, sends them into a herd of pigs.

They go dive into the Sea of Galilee. Incredible day. This is one day.

One day. Massive expression of divine power and an epic terminal conclusion. The verdict is in. He does what He does by the power of hell. It has to be hell because only hell would attack our righteousness, our religion. Now I want you to turn to Mark 4, and I want you to see what happened that day that was so dramatic in the ministry of the Lord Jesus. Mark 4, 33. With many such parables, He was speaking the word to them, so far as they were able to hear it, and He did not speak to them without a parable.

But He was explaining everything privately to His own disciples. That is the first time. That's the ominous day when Jesus began to speak in parables. Really dramatic.

Why? Why does He speak in parables? Why the change? Why does He now give illustrations, stories?

Well, there's a contemporary trend that wants to give you this answer. Because He realized after two years that He wasn't getting through, that His propositional kind of teaching, His doctrinal teaching, His theological teaching, His expositions of the Old Testament, straightforward discourse was not connecting. Teaching truth straightforward in a clear fashion didn't work, so He turned to stories. He realized that He's going to have to tell stories because people love stories. And who could tell a story better than Jesus? Jesus then makes this huge shift in His ministry and becomes a storyteller. And His stories have so much interest and so much pathos, and they give depth and insight.

So this is how we need to approach our preaching. This is the genre we must use. We need to tell stories because they're accessible, and they're clear, and they're easy, and they're familiar. And oh, by the way, never did Jesus tell a story with any kind of a fantasy.

There was never a fantastic character, a bizarre alien kind of form or reality or non-reality. Every single story was real people, real places doing real things that everybody does all the time. So they're not mysterious fantasies.

They're just stories that everybody can understand, and that gives them a kind of a life feel, and we feel good hearing them, and there's a lot of sentimentality in it, and they're so easy to understand. So there's been a trend to get preachers, young preachers, a whole generation of preachers to become storytellers. And the people point here to this, and they say, He didn't speak to them without a parable, and neither should you.

Hmm. One book says, a sermon is not a doctrinal lecture. It's an event in time. It's a narrative art form, more like a play or novel in shape than a book.

Hence, we are not engineering scientists. We are narrative artists by professional function. This writer says, Does it not seem strange to you that in our speech and homiletical training, we seldom considered the connection between our work and that of the playwright novelist or television writer? I propose that we begin by regarding the sermon as a homiletical plot, a narrative art form, a sacred story," end quote.

Wow. There's a whole lot of young people who are saying, Yeah, that makes so much sense. So now what preachers have become is rather than expositors of Scripture and preachers of doctrine, they have become storytellers. It dominates a lot of mega church environments for sure. In some cases, the pulpit goes away.

In some cases, it's replaced by a stage and a screen, and the church staff is made up primarily of the drama team and the film crew. Declaring truth in absolute propositional fact form is out, and what is in vogue is telling stories, and that's so much more genteel than brute facts or unambiguous truth claims. This perspective on preaching has gained wide acceptance, and now we're fighting against a very powerful trend in this direction. Another writer says preaching is in crisis.

Why? Because the traditional conceptual approach no longer works. It fails to capture the interest of listeners. The old topical conceptual approach to preaching is critically, if not terminally, ill. Well, that's just one of many books, myriads of books, calling young preachers to be storytellers.

I can't resist another one. Quote, contrary to what some would have us believe, story, not doctrine, is the Bible's main ingredient. The Bible's a storybook. We do not have a doctrine of creation. We have stories of creation. We do not have a concept of the resurrection. We have narratives of Easter. There is relatively little in either the Old Testament or the New Testament, doesn't rest on narrative or story in some form.

End quote. First of all, let me say, he doesn't understand the difference between a story and history because the Bible is not a bunch of stories. It is history, but never mind that, small oversight. Statements like these are dangerously misleading, and it is sheer folly to say that doctrine is a completely different and unacceptable genre to telling a story, as if they are mutually exclusive.

I beg to differ. We do have a doctrine of creation. We do have a doctrine of resurrection. You read the doctrine of creation everywhere you read in the Old and the New Testament, any definitive statements about God creating. And you read the doctrine of resurrection, in particular in 1 Corinthians 15, which is a prolonged doctrinal dissertation on the resurrection.

But never mind that small oversight either. Trying to pit stories against doctrine is an impossibility, biblically, because wherever there's a story, there's a doctrine. There's always a doctrine. Separating Jesus' stories from propositional doctrinal truth is the nonsense of postmodern language deconstruction. Why would postmodernists want to deconstruct language? Because they don't like what the Bible says. So they deconstruct the Bible to give room for their pet sins and tolerances.

The goal is always language deconstruction has one goal, eliminate truth, overthrow dogma, and make people feel good about what they want to do. So commentators on the parables often say Jesus is directly repudiating doctrinal preaching, propositional teaching. So let's go back to our original question. What was the original question? Why parables? Why on that day did Jesus shift to parables?

Was it because He wasn't getting through and things weren't clear? And, wow, He said, I've spent two years trying to figure this deal out. Finally, I got it. I don't know what that does to omniscience, but finally I've got it and I'm shifting.

I need to make these hard, deep truths clear, easy, simple, accessible, flexible. Is that what's going on? Go back to Matthew 13, verse 10. The disciples came and said to Him, why do You speak to them in parables? There's the question. I didn't invent the question. That's the question. Why are You doing this, Lord?

Why are You doing this? Listen to His answer, 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.

What? What are You saying? I speak in parables so they cannot understand.

Did you get that? It's not given to them to understand. If I keep speaking clear truth, they will. If I speak parables, they won't. Do you know why Jesus taught in parables? It was a judgment.

It was a judgment on willful, hard-hearted unbelief. For whoever has, to him more shall be given and he will have an abundance. That's you, disciples. But whoever doesn't 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, while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand, this is a judgment. Listen, when you hear somebody say, we need to speak in parables to make things clear to unbelievers, that is the opposite that Jesus intended when He gave the parables.

They were designed to hide the truth. Jesus is saying, I am now speaking in terms that they cannot understand. And by the way, He extended that on the day of Pentecost.

First He spoke in stories they couldn't understand, and then He spoke in a language they couldn't understand. This is a judgment. This is a judgment. You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur. Along with ministering on the radio, John serves as chancellor of the Master's University and Seminary, and today's lesson is part of his series titled Stories with Purpose.

Let me remind you that this complete study is available to you free of charge in MP3 and transcript format. Download the lessons from our website, gty.org, and you can purchase the study in an eight-CD album if that works best for you. It might make a great addition to your church library. To pick up John's study called Stories with Purpose, contact us today.

The eight-CD album is reasonably priced and shipping is free. To order, call our customer service line at 1-800-55-GRACE. That number again, 800-55-GRACE, or you can also order at our website, gty.org. And even quicker, you can download all eight messages from Stories with Purpose free of charge online at gty.org. Now whether you want to dig deep into all of the parables Jesus taught or you just want to know what the Bible says about marriage, church leadership, or honoring Christ on the job, make sure you check out our website, gty.org. From there you can find how to download our Study Bible app, which gives the full text of Scripture and allows you to instantly access study guides, blog articles, and sermons, all of them related to whatever passage you're studying. And for a low cost, you can also add the notes from the MacArthur Study Bible so that that's with you wherever you take your device. It's all available for you on our website, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for starting your week with us and be here tomorrow for another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace To You.