The Purpose for Parables

Parables were not creative, artistic efforts by people who thought that the pulpit was theater. Parables are not dreamy fantasies told for sentimental purposes to make people feel good.

They are not vague blank slates for folks to fill in the blanks. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson, a New York family looking to spruce up their first home, bought a vase at a garage sale for $3, and to their surprise, it was actually a treasure from the Ming Dynasty valued at over $2 million. While that family was amazingly blessed, the previous owner, well, clearly and tragically, missed the vase's true worth. And the truth is, many make a similar mistake. They miss the abundance of spiritual treasure found in the parables of Jesus.

Don't be one of them. Take an in-depth look at these jewels of Christ's teaching with John MacArthur in his series on Grace to You titled Stories with Purpose. And now here's the lesson. 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. 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.

Is that what's going on? Matthew 13, verse 10, the disciples came and said to Him, why do You speak to them in parables? 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. And by the way, this is connected to Isaiah 6. This is a kind of fulfillment of the very same scenario back in Isaiah 6. Do you remember what happened in Isaiah 6? There's chapter 5, judgment coming on Israel, severe judgment, the Babylonian captivity. Masses and hordes are coming of Chaldeans from Babylon. They come, they destroy the city, destroy the temple, massacre the people, haul them off into captivity.

We all know that. Now, Isaiah knows that judgment is coming. He has a vision of God.

He feels inadequate. He says, I'm a man of unclean lips. I dwell amidst people of unclean lips. And an angel takes a tongue in his vision and cleanses his tongue, and he's purified. And the Lord says, who will go?

Whom shall I send? He says, here am I, send me. And the Lord says, okay, you're the man. You go, and you preach judgment. Go preach judgment. Go preach judgment. Then God says this to him.

It's quoted here. Tell the people this. Keep on hearing, but you will not understand. Keep on seeing, but you will not perceive. The heart of this people has become dull. Their ears are scarcely here.

Their eyes, they've closed. Otherwise, they would see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, return and I would heal them. Go tell the people this. Go tell the people, judgment's coming, judgment's coming. And listen, they will not understand. They will not understand. So Isaiah says, Lord, how long do I do that? I mean, what kind of a calling is that? I'm going to talk to people who won't understand and won't respond. How long do I do that until there's nobody left to do it?

Keep doing it. Why, Lord? Why, Lord? General verse of Isaiah 6, there's a seed. There's a holy seed. There's a remnant.

There's a stump. There's a tenth. So this is exact application of this in the first century. 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. But to them, verse 11, it has not been granted, but to you, it has been granted.

So the Lord had to explain the parables even to them. What is an illustration without a point? You don't know what it means. Unless you know the point, you don't know the meaning of the illustration. It's a riddle. So here's an illustration. Jesus pulls them aside and says, let me explain the parable I just gave about the sower.

He says, here's the explanation. Verse 19, when anyone hears the word of the kingdom and doesn't understand it, the evil one comes, snatches away what's been sown in the heart. This is the one that's beside the road, the one on whom the seed was sown in the rocky places. This is the man who hears the word, immediately receives with joy, no firm root. Only temporary affliction, persecution arise because of the word, immediately falls away. The one on whom seed was sown among the thorns is the one who hears the word.

In the worry of the world, the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, it becomes unfruitful. The one whom seed was sown on good soil, this is the man who hears the word, understands, indeed bears fruit, brings forth some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Oh, He explained it. He explained it. And apart from such an explanation they wouldn't have had any idea what it meant either. The parables do illustrate spiritual truth when they are explained by the giver of the parable. But in a sense, they have a primary role of judgment, the primary role of judgment. So for unbelievers, they are not clear.

They are not clear. They hide truth in riddles. This is a judgment on final unbelief. This is why Jesus taught in parables, judgment on those who rejected His clear teaching.

Now let me add a note. Parables were also mercy. There's a mercy element in this judgment because if He keeps speaking to the crowds in clear unmistakable terms and keeps explaining Scripture and proclaiming objective doctrinal truth, their culpability increases. He addressed that. He addressed that.

You will remember these words. Maybe you didn't know the context, but in the 12th of Luke, listen to this. Jesus told a story about a slave who knew his master's will and didn't do it. And He said, when the master comes back, he's going to receive many lashes. This is a picture of someone who had gospel opportunity and rejected it. And this is one who was going to be flogged. Verse 48 talks about a flogging. And then this statement, this to whom much is given, what?

Much is required. That's talking about judgment. If I keep giving truth to these people who reject it, it only increases their judgment. So there is, within the judgment of speaking in riddles and parables, both a curse and a mercy. Concealing truth is a judgment, tempered with mercy, so that He doesn't add guilt upon guilt upon guilt upon guilt upon guilt. But for those who had ears to hear, He explained the parables. But even the disciples wouldn't know what they meant if our Lord didn't explain them.

How would they ever know? But for the hard-hearted, parables were a judgment. They were a divine judgment. On that day, that day in Galilee, that Sabbath day, the Lord rendered a judgment. And you remember, don't you, that the Father had committed all judgment to the Son, and the Son could drop the hammer of judgment when He knew it was appropriate to be dropped?

Think about it. There is not another parable in the entire New Testament told by anyone but Jesus, because parables are for judgment, and only Jesus can render that judgment. You don't have the apostle Paul going into a city and rendering a judgment on that city by speaking in things they can't understand because he is not the judge. Parables are confined. There are not even any of them in John. There are 40 parables. They're all Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They are confined to the ministry of Jesus Christ because they are acts of divine judgment which only He can render.

His parables are the same today. For believers, they illustrate the truth because we understand them. How do we understand them? Because they're explained to us.

And I'll even go beyond that. Because we understand the whole of Scripture, because we understand the whole gospel, because we understand salvation, even when we don't have a recorded explanation, we understand the parables. Not because we've been given some mystical insight, but because, listen carefully, all parables are about the gospel. All 40 are about the gospel. They're all about salvation. And if you understand salvation in its fullness and its richness, and by the way, the more you understand the fullness and richness of salvation, the more you will understand the parables. For the disciples, they didn't have the cross, the resurrection, and the teaching of the parables that we have in the New Testament, so they were asking, what does this mean? But I have to say this as well. If you had to choose between having a story and having a doctrinal presentation, take the doctrinal presentation every time.

Why? Because the story is less. For example, Jesus gave a simple little parable. The kingdom of heaven is like a man who found a pearl and sold everything to buy the pearl.

Do you understand that? If you're a non-believer, you don't know anything about salvation, you're saying, I don't know what that is. A guy found something valuable and bought it. When you read that parable, what immediately do you think of? The most valuable thing that exists is what? Salvation. And you would give up everything to receive it, forsaking all. But that's a nice parable, but our salvation is way beyond a pearl. Do you understand?

It's way beyond a pearl. I understand that as an illustration, but my theology of salvation far outstrips that little analogy far. And you can take any aspect of salvation, any aspect of the gospel, and whatever aspect of the gospel is relayed in a parable, if you know the Word of God, your understanding of the gospel truth far outstrips the parable, the simplicity of the parable.

They do illustrate, but they are less than the glory, the full glory of that truth. There is a rare parable, I'm going to talk about it next Sunday, in which the Jews, the unbelieving Jews that week in Passion Week were listening to Jesus, and this rare thing happened. They understood a judgment parable. Normally, they didn't. It wasn't for them.

It was hiding. There was, during Passion Week, a parable. They understood. He made sure they understood.

We'll look at that next time. But rejecters don't get it. They don't understand the parables.

It amazes me. All parables relate to the gospel and salvation. There is no parenting parable.

No. You say, well, what about the prodigal son? The prodigal son, what about that, you know, where he had a good father, but there was no mom in the house. So, you know, the kid went haywire and ran off. So, you know, you need a good wife, and you just need a whole family there.

And he ran off, and he messed up his life. You know, you need to be careful how you parent. Are your kids going to go to a foreign country and eat with pigs?

Really? That's a parenting parable? You think that's a parenting parable? If that's a parenting parable, then the hero is the one who stayed home, the self-righteous Pharisee who stayed home. That's not a parenting parable. Listen, there are 40 parables.

They're all about the gospel and nothing but the gospel, not about parenting. You say, oh, what about the Good Samaritan, the Good Samaritan? What about the Good Samaritan? You look up any website on social justice.

I don't care what it is. Anybody advocating reallocation of wealth, helping the poor, doing whatever is under the category of social justice, and you will inevitably find the parable on the Good Samaritan who was walking down the road. And even though he was an alien in terms of social relations, he saw this guy beaten up and bloodied that the priest and the Levite had passed. And he went over, bound up his wounds, and took care of him, put him in an alien, paid for it, said he'd come back and pay more.

This is what we need to do. We need to go down the road and find the people bruised and bleeding, the deprived, and we need to give them some help, and that's what that's about. Well, one of the more noteworthy treatments of that I read on the website was, look, he was a very superficial Good Samaritan. If he really was a real Good Samaritan, he'd be back on the road every day. This would be his life. He would be a road guy. He would stay there.

He would get up in the morning, go to the road, and just try to find people who were lying around beaten up by the robbers on the road. This wouldn't have been a one-time thing. A one-time thing doesn't cut it. That's not a Good Samaritan. That's a good start, that if he doesn't keep going, and they extrapolate there. This one went on to say, by the way, and that isn't even enough.

You can't be on the road all the time. The very fact that that stuff goes on the road means there's a problem in Jerusalem. So, if you really are a Good Samaritan, you get in the power system of Jerusalem, and you start lobbying the Sanhedrin, and you get in there, and you make sure that they get some protection on that road, and you make sure that they get some food to the people who are beaten up other people to steal their money, and that if you really follow the Good Samaritan and you want to be a complete Good Samaritan, you change the entire economics of the culture, the social culture, and then there's no need for a Good Samaritan.

Let me tell you something. That parable has nothing to do with helping poor people get on their economic feet. That parable is about self-righteous damnation. It's a salvation story.

It's a story of what is true salvation and how does it manifest itself. But again, sloppy thinking and sloppy preaching and writing about the parables is legion. All parables are gospel illustrations. All parables express the theology of salvation. We understand them. Even the ones in the New Testament, as I said, that aren't explained to us, we understand because we understand salvation, because we have the full doctrinal picture.

We get that. And, of course, the non-believer who doesn't understand salvation, who rejects salvation doesn't get the meaning of the parable, so they get turned into some kind of sentimental stories or some kind of other perspective. They all are the kingdom of heaven is like. The sphere of salvation can be explained this way. Parables were not creative artistic efforts by people who thought that the pulpit was theater. Parables are not dreamy fantasies told for sentimental purposes to make people feel good.

They are not vague blank slates for folks to fill in the blanks. And, of course, people who reject the gospel of salvation can find no meaning in the parables corresponding to truth because the parables can be fraught with judgment. Go back to Matthew 13 for a minute, verse 34. Matthew 13, by the way, is full of parables. We won't go into those, but verse 34, all these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables, and He didn't speak to them without a parable.

Why? This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet in Psalm 78, I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter things hidden since the foundation of the world. Parables hide. Parables hide.

They hide. Are we somehow violating the teaching style of Jesus when we speak in propositional truth? No.

No. All parables are doctrinal, theological, soteriological, propositional truth, all of them, to those who understand them. Verse 36, He left the crowds, went into the house. His disciples came to Him and said, explain to us that one about the tares. He just explained the one about the seed and the soil.

There's no way to understand them unless He gives an explanation. But by the time you get to where we are with the full New Testament and the amazing manifest revelation of all that salvation is through the epistles and the book of Acts and everything we have, we have a rich understanding of the parables. The parables themselves convey truth, but their purpose was as a judgment on unbelievers.

Well, that's a lot to digest. All parables are more than propositional truth, but nevertheless all truth is understood by logic. No truth is understood by emotion. No truth is understood by sentiment. No truth is understood by feeling. All truth is apprehended by a rational grasp of facts that are put together in a reasonable argument leading to an ultimate truth.

This is what we do. Every sermon is an argument. I've been arguing with you today. I've been presenting an argument.

I've been making a defense of how to understand parables. Based on facts, we've gone through the facts. The facts are all coming out of the Scripture, right? We've gone to Matthew 13.

We've gone to Mark 4. We looked at Luke 12, and we said, here are the facts that lead to this inescapable conclusion about the parables. All preaching is rational. All preaching demands logical process, and propositions or facts are the building blocks of logic and the tools of reason.

If you're a Bible teacher, the facts come out of the text, simply stated assertions of reality in a progressive combination coming to a final conclusion. The final conclusion that I want to leave you with is that what nobody in the world understands, you do understand. You do understand.

It's amazing, isn't it? We're nobody. We're just a group of people hunkered down here on Roscoe Boulevard while the world goes along its merry way. They have no idea how much we know. They have no idea that we know the mysteries of the universe. Listen to 1 Corinthians 2, 7. We speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory, the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood. If they understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. They didn't understand it, but they couldn't understand it, and God desired that they crucify His Son for our redemption. Just as it is written, things which eye has not seen, ear has not heard, have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who what?

Who what? Who love Him. We love Him, and He opens all the truth to us. This is such a great reality that Luke 10, 23 repeats what's in Matthew.

Turning to His disciples, He said privately, "'Blessed are the eyes which see the things that you see.'" Do you understand that? Do you understand that this world doesn't comprehend these glorious, transcendent, divine realities?

But you do. Not many noble, not many mighty, right? The lowly, the nobodies. Promise of blessing. "'I say to you, many prophets and kings wish to see the things which you see and did not see them, and hear the things which you hear and didn't hear them.'" And still don't.

Still don't. You are the greatest people in the planet. The greatest, because in you is the knowledge of the truth.

You are also the greatest resource to the rest of the world. Thus, the Great Commission is given to you. Let's pray. Lord, we believe today in this hour there are some people who are unbelievers, who maybe overtly don't reject You, but they have never confessed You as Lord. Forsaken all to follow You, denied self, taken up the cross, who've never abandoned the world, the flesh, the economy, who have never fallen down in repentance to embrace Jesus Christ as the only hope in this life and, more importantly, in the life to come. Lord, I pray that Your grace would be mighty on their souls today, and that their hearts would open like a flower to the sun. They might embrace Christ and His glorious gospel.

Judgment is a reality, but judgment is a tragedy. We seek no man's judgment, even as You have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. So, Lord, put Your saving grace on display, even in lives here and now. This we ask in the Savior's name.

Amen. You're listening to John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. He's helping you understand and benefit from some of Jesus' best-known parables. The title of John's study here on Grace to You, Stories with Purpose. John, you spoke today about Jesus using parables to make it impossible for those who opposed Him to understand divine truth. And if that's the reason Jesus told these stories, how can they be effectively used in evangelism today? The only way the parables can be used effectively in evangelism is for somebody to explain them.

And of course, that's for us to do. But for us to explain them, we have to understand them. And need I say what is so obvious? That most of the parables are misunderstood. As simple as they are, as graphic as they are, as clear as they should be to believing people, most of the parables are treated superficially. They are, as you would expect, simple stories. But as you would also expect coming from the mind of Christ who invented them, they are deep and profound. They also articulate the matter of salvation and the kingdom of God in a unique way.

I want to tell you about a book. The title is Parables, subtitled The Mysteries of God's Kingdom Revealed Through the Stories Jesus Told. No one could make up stories like Jesus. And embedded in those stories is the most profound truth about salvation. These aren't morality tales. They aren't lessons about honesty, generosity, parenting, kindness. They're about salvation, eternal life. I will explain for you from the Bible what Jesus meant through these incredible stories and the danger of missing their intended meaning. Parables is a 200-plus page book available for a reasonable price. I want you to order your copy today. Just contact us and ask for the book, Parables.

That's right. This is a great book, and no one could better communicate profound truth with a simple story than Jesus. But as simple as his stories were, they are often misunderstood and misapplied. To make sure you're getting the right meaning and applying the parables in the right way, pick up a copy of John's book titled Parables when you contact us today. Our toll-free number here? 855-GRACE, and you can also order the book at our website, gty.org.

Parables will show you the purpose of the ingeniously simple stories that Jesus told, and it will help you understand God's kingdom and your role in it like never before. Just call us at 855-GRACE or go to gty.org. And thanks for remembering that it's listeners like you who help us connect people around the world with biblical truth, including the series on parables that you're listening to right now, to help bring daily spiritual nourishment to people like you in your community and beyond. Express your support by writing to us at Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. And you can also donate online at gty.org or when you call us at 855-GRACE. Thanks also for your prayers for John and the staff. We need your prayers, and that's really the most important way you can strengthen this ministry. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, encouraging you to be here tomorrow when John shows you a parable that even Jesus' enemies understood, which normally was not the case. So be here for our next half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.