Parable on Parables

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

with my kids, there we go, there we are, went on an England mission trip with my kids' school. And Story, my daughter came along with and it was a really, really good time. We saw a lot of kids hear the gospel. And yeah, I would love to tell you a little bit more about it. But today we have some scripture to get to and we have a new sermon series to talk about. Ears to hear. This phrase, ears to hear, was a common phrase both in Jesus' teaching but also for the day. You would hear that very often in Jesus' time. He didn't kind of coin that phrase, he just used it a lot. And that phrase, ears to hear, is, like I said, really common. Whenever Jesus used it though, he used it as more of an invitation. And so when Jesus would talk about it, he would say it much more of like, if anyone has ears to hear, let him hear, right? If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.

And the more you study Jesus, the more you look at what he is teaching, you really see how invitation oriented Jesus' teaching is. So he's not just saying, okay, have ears to hear, but he really is kind of putting that out there. It's an invitation and anytime he's talking, parables, illustrations, teaching, conversation, anything like that, there's this invitation, there's this calling that is kind of laced in, laced in through there. I'll give you an example. Even when he's talking to the rich young ruler, right? That's a really famous time whenever he's talking to the rich young ruler and he says to the rich young ruler, look, you wanna be perfect? Then go and sell everything you have, give it to the poor, gain treasure in heaven, but what does he end it with? And come and follow me, right? So even in that, even in the rebuke, even in talking with the Pharisees sometimes,

he's lacing invitation in there, okay? This summer, we are gonna be taking the time to listen to Jesus' invitation, in the parables, in his teaching, in illustrations. We're calling the series, Ears to Hear, to the sayings of Jesus, okay? All through those things, Jesus is calling us and he's inviting us into his kingdom. He's inviting us to encounter him to be made new. He's inviting us to think about things differently, to be in fellowship with other people, to make disciples, to be on mission with him. He's calling us, he's inviting us to do those things, to kind of walk with him. But if we're going to do that, if we're gonna understand that, if we're gonna do that this summer, if we're gonna do it today, if we're gonna listen to that calling, we must grasp what parables are there for, okay? We've gotta get this about parables. We have to know four things. We have to know what they are.

We have to know how they work. We have to know the effect that, sorry, that's three, the effect that they can have and we need to know what to do with them, okay? So we need to know parables. We need to know what they are, how they work, the effect they can have and what we're gonna do with them. The reason that we're starting with Mark 4 verses 21 through 25 today, it's not a lot of verses, but it's often called the parable on parables, okay? So Mark 4 21 through 25, it comes, these verses come right after Jesus has told a really famous parable that we're gonna be talking about in a few weeks. I think in two Sundays, Dan Hay is gonna be preaching on the parable of the four soils. That's a really, really famous, if you're not kind of into Christianity and you've never heard of that, just know that that's one of the more famous parables that Jesus preaches. So he spends an extended time on that parable,

but after he does that, there is a lot of confusion as to what that parable means. So he's talking about soils and seeds and birds and thorns and vines. I mean, it's an extended metaphor. People are really confused. And so what Jesus does to kind of solve that confusion among the crowd and among his disciples, of course, Jesus doesn't address it head on. He starts talking about lamps, okay? So Jesus isn't saying, look, let me explain the parable to you to the crowds. He does it to the disciples, but to the crowds, he turns to the crowds and he says to them in verse 21, he says, is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket or under a bed and not on a stand? Okay, so he's talking about lamps. Is a lamp brought in to be put under a bed or basket and not on a stand? Lighting a lamp was an everyday chore, okay? People in Jesus' day, they lit lamps all the time. They'd wake up early, light a lamp, okay?

When the sun set and they still had stuff to do around the house, light a lamp. Lighting a lamp was like turning on a light switch for us. It's a very common, common thing. Yet, Jesus here puts a twist on it in the next verse, Mark 4:22. He says, for nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light. Typically, other times Jesus talks about lighting a lamp and not putting it under a bed. He, like in Matthew, chapter five, he's talking about letting your light shine, okay? So that's what he means in those other verses. In these verses, he does not mean that, okay? Because in 4.22, what he says is nothing is hidden except to be made manifest or to be revealed, right? Nor is anything secret except to come to light. These lamps, in other words, these lamps that you light are hidden on purpose. They're hidden to be revealed later.

So I still remember a long, long time ago when my oldest was about seven or eight, okay? So I don't know if you've ever hidden Easter eggs for kids, but there is an age, there's a dividing line, right? Where you no longer want to hide, excuse me, you no longer want to find Easter eggs, now you want to hide the Easter eggs, okay? It's a big rite of passage, okay, I'm sure most of you remember that, you had some big party, I'm sure, to go through that.

But whenever Jed was about, and I don't remember the exact age, but he said, hey, look, look, he sat us down because we needed this moment and he needed to tell us, and he said, look, I don't want to hide the eggs anymore, excuse me, I don't want to find the eggs anymore, that's what little kids do, I'm a big kid, I want to help hide the eggs, okay? But Jed had not quite grasped at that time, I think he's got it now, he had not, maybe, he had not quite grasped the point of hiding eggs, and so what he wanted to do was he wanted to bury the eggs like three feet down in the front yard, okay? They'll never find it that way, okay? You, dad, they'll never find them, it'll be so great, and I'm like, okay, it's not really what you're supposed to do with eggs. So what I had to help him understand was that you needed to hide Easter eggs in places where your siblings would find them, okay?

And in fact, the point of hiding, that's the point of hiding an Easter egg. If you hide an Easter egg so that nobody finds it, you've missed the point on an Easter egg, okay? You're not doing Easter egg anymore, you're doing like, that's like a escape room level stuff, and we're not doing that. This is exactly Jesus's point here in verse 22, right? He's saying, nothing is hidden except to be made manifest. Nothing is secret except to come to light. In other words, that lamp that's being lit is being hidden on purpose, but it's being hidden so that it will be found, okay? This is what parables are. Parables are like Easter eggs. Parables in them, Jesus hides things so that we will find them. He hides them kind of in plain sight. He hides these really amazing things, like the kingdom of God, but he hides them in, kind of disguises them as ordinary things, right?

And we see this even in our own life, spiritually. Like, so when we're going through a spiritual, like a really tough trial, right? Well, all that is is an opportunity to grow, right? In fact, the only way we grow spiritually is in the midst of a trial, and it's amazing to grow spiritually, and it really stinks to go through a trial, but it's there. When you follow Jesus, joy is hidden in ordinary service.

That if you want joy, if you wanna be the greatest, then be a servant. Then offer a cup of cold water to somebody, right? This connects to how parables work, right? This helps us understand what parables are. They're kinda Easter eggs, they're meant to be found. This connects to how they work. Let's look in the next couple of verses 23 through the first part of 24. It says, if anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. So this is Jesus' kind of famous phrase, his little catchphrase here. And he said to them, pay attention to what you hear, okay? So his famous phrase is kind of an invitation for anybody within shouting distance to hear what is going on. But in the second verse, in verse 24, he moves from third person to second person. Now, I know, I talk about grammar way too much for some people, I understand. But it is really helpful for here, okay? In 23, he's saying, look, no, the previous slide.

There you go. Okay, in 23, he's saying, if anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. So that's anybody, that's third person, okay? Like just, but then in 24, he says, pay attention to what you hear. So he's going second person. And it seems small, but it changes verse 24 in two different ways. In the first, that we see it's literally that verse, pay attention to what you hear is, see what you hear, right? Consider what you are hearing. Parables require us to see what we hear. In other words, if you're not rolling it around in your mind, if you're not wrestling with it, you're not considering it, that it's just gonna sound like stories about lamps and seeds. It's not gonna make any sense. You're gonna say, I don't care about mustard seed. I don't care if birds can land on trees. It doesn't matter, why are we listening to this? It doesn't make sense. You must wrestle it down.

You must consider it. You must roll it around in your mind. And this is how the Lord works, right? I'll give you an example. Let's say that you have a really big decision to make. Okay, maybe you're thinking about moving, maybe you're thinking about changing jobs, maybe you're thinking about having another kid, just whatever, you got a big decision to make. I'm sure, just like me, I'm sure you took three minutes to pray about it and poof, the answer came to you like in a big banner from the ceiling and you knew exactly what to do. Is that how your spiritual experience goes? No, that's not even close. It's comical, okay? What happens? What happens? You pray about that decision, you agonize over it, you wait for it, you're frustrated through it, you get some false indicators, maybe over here, maybe you get like some indicators for this and some indicators for choice A and choice B,

they both look good at different times. It's a wrestling, it's a process. Why? Why does God do that? He does that to meet us in it. God wants us to go through that. And I tell people this all the time, look, that your potential job change, your potential move, your potential next kid, all of that, in our mind, what we do is we think of that as the finish line. Okay, so my wife and I, we've been trying to move to Burleson for three years. It has not happened because of COVID and crazy markets and all that, okay? So long story short, we're not in Burleson yet, okay?

The point of that, if we one day move to Burleson, and I hope we do, okay, when we one day move to Burleson, if I just have that in my mind as the finish line, I'm missing the point. The point of me kind of agonizing and wanting to move to Burleson and not being able to, the point of that is not for me to one day move to Burleson. The point of that is for me to wrestle in prayer through that, to see what the Lord is teaching me in that, to understand that he's got kind of this bigger plan that I'm part of and be reminded of that in the midst of my struggle, in the midst of my frustration.

If you're thinking about changing jobs, the finish line isn't the changed job. That's not the finish line. The finish line is you going to the Lord Jesus and saying, I don't get it, I need your help, I need you to help me kind of see through this and you'll wait, it'll take time, you'll be frustrated. And if in your life, all of your decisions are like magic poof, you know, two minutes, you throw up a prayer and then you totally have an answer and that's all that ever happens, let me just offer this piece of advice. You're probably missing out on a lot more than you think. You're probably missing out on a lot of spiritual maturity there. All right. So it also changes, sorry, so back to verse 24. It changes it in two ways. So the first way is that it requires you to see what you hear, right? It makes you think about, it also says, see what you hear, right? So that you is in the second person.

And that really kind of reiterates, it's look, this isn't something that anybody else can do for you. Nobody can wrestle through a decision for you. Nobody can go to God and agonize through something for you. Nobody can discover what the Lord has for you for you. It has to be you, it has to be personal. And this is how parables work. Parables are made specifically for you to discover them personally. Let me say that one more time. Parables, parables are made specifically for you to discover them personally. Nobody else can do it for you, right? You don't just kind of do it together and get the benefit of that. It's you, you've got to wrestle. You pay attention to what you hear. It's okay. We've gotten halfway through. What are parables? Parables are Easter eggs. How do they work? They're meant to be discovered personally. And now I want to look at the effect that they can have, verse 24 in effect.

Here we go, 24. And he said to them, pay attention to what you hear. And then he adds that, he says, with the measure you use, it will be measured to you and still more will be added to you, okay? Jesus actually is putting, there's a bit of a play on words there. If you look at the original language, it says, pay attention what you hear. With the measure you measure, it will be measured to you. Okay, he's the same word three times and he's kind of like, he's kind of just trying to hit on that word measure, okay? Parables, parables train your mind on something new, right?

The effect of a parable should be to rearrange your categories on what is spiritual and what isn't. What is beneficial and what is not. What is happening and what is not happening. They are meant to do that. It is if Jesus is saying here in verse 24, okay? Every way that you try to advance in your life, all the tactics that you use, all of the values that you put in play, all of that is going to come back at you plus, okay? Now I realize that's vague, so let me use kind of an illustration. And I tried to get a pair of these, but have you ever seen these, they're called either Chinese finger cuffs, Chinese handcuffs, right? They're these things that, it's just woven, just braided. You stick both fingers in it and then you try to pull it apart and you can't get it out, right? It's an amazing invention. When I was four years old, it totally blew my mind, right? Like it's just,

but Chinese handcuffs work this way in particular. When you stick both fingers in it and then you pull out, you can get your fingers out. And it actually doesn't matter how strong you are, okay? Because even though that little Chinese handcuff thing is very small and it's woven and it's actually very strong, okay? So it doesn't matter if you're a bodybuilder, it doesn't matter if you're Mr. Universe, when you get your finger stuck in Chinese handcuffs, you can't use enough force to pull them out. Chinese handcuffs then teach you not to use force.

And they do that by using your own force against you. Does that make sense? So you got some Chinese handcuffs in there. The harder you pull, that's actually the harder the Chinese handcuffs have a hold on you. Do you understand that? Parables work the exact same way, that through them, Jesus teaches us not to use moral or religious effort to get into the kingdom of God.

Let me say that again. Through parables, Jesus teaches us not to use moral or religious effort to kind of muscle our way into the kingdom of God. Let me give you two examples. For example, if you try to earn your righteousness, if you try to say like, look, when I stand before God, I believe in God, when I stand before him, he's gonna see that I tried really hard, he's gonna see that I'm a consistent person, that I'm real, that I was good to my friends, that I paid my taxes on time, that I raised my kids well, he's gonna see all of that. So in effect, what you're doing is you're saying my morality, what I've done, my righteousness is gonna be enough.

So you're trying to earn righteousness, you're trying to be saved by being moral. And what Jesus is saying there, to that kind of statement, okay, you want morality to save you? Have at it. Go ahead. But if you do, you will be measured by the highest morality possible and you will fail. You will be measured by the highest morality possible and you will fail, like Chinese handcuffs, right? You think I can be moral and I can kind of push my way in. But you can't. Because however much you use that morality to push your way in, that standard's just gonna get higher and higher and higher and higher and higher. Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew five, he says, hey, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, you're not getting into the kingdom of heaven. Let me use another example. What about gaining God's favor by making sacrifices for him, right? Like God, look what I've given up for you.

Look how poor I've lived. Look how much I've given away. Look how generous I am. Look at that, right? And Jesus is saying in verse 24, in fact, he's saying, okay, you want your own effort to save you, then go ahead. Go ahead. You want the amount of sacrifice that you've done to save you? Go ahead. But anything, anything that you hold back is going to condemn you. Anything at all. Even one thing. You can say, hey, I lived my whole life. I was so generous. You want that to be the measure? Okay, it's going to be measured to you, but it's going to be more. And that one thing that you held back, that one time you were selfish, condemned. Not making it. The parables literally change your mind. And I don't mean that in the wrong way. I mean it in the right way, literally. Parables literally change your mind if you let them. Verse 24 is saying in effect, there's not another way to receive this abundant light.

There's not another way to find joy or hope or peace or anything like that. It's all in Jesus. You don't need more rules to measure yourself. You don't need other ways to see if you stack up. And when you do, when you lay that rule down, when you measure yourself against it, it doesn't matter what you think about it. Because when you create those measures, you're going to be measured against it. It's going to be increased and they will only condemn you. No matter what measure you put out there, it's going to condemn you. Jesus presses this in further in verse 25. Mark 4, 25, it says, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. Okay, my wife,

she's not here to defend herself, so I'll be gentle. My wife cannot pass a construction site without knowing what's going to be built. She can't do it. It's impossible, okay? She sees like some construction crews happening and it's within like, I don't know, a three mile radius of where we live. She's got a no man. And so she's got websites, like she knows how to research this stuff. My wife does research on what's being built. She's looking at building permits, okay? She really can't stand it to not know what's being built. And it deeply bothers her whenever she doesn't know. She always has to kind of seek and figure that out. What Jesus is saying here, it's the same kind of bias. It's never stop seeking, right? Never stop seeking Jesus personally. What he says is, he's describing the kingdom here. He says, to the one who has, more will be given. So let's stop there.

To the one who has, the person who has stuff got it by seeking, okay? So to the one who has, they receive what they have by seeking. So he's saying, look, if you're seeking and you receive things, then you're going to receive even more things. You're gonna, if you seek and you find then you will receive more opportunities to seek and find. It incentivizes in the kingdom, it is incentivized to seek. Seeking is rewarded. When you seek, you'll find, and then you're actually gonna get more. But in the kingdom, you are also penalized for presuming that you already know everything. That's what the Greeks would call hubris. It's presuming knowledge, presuming to understand everything without really understanding everything.

In the city of Burleson and the surrounding areas, this is of particular importance because in our city, in the surrounding areas, there are many, many people who presume to already know. They presume to know, like, oh yeah, hey, I've heard that Jesus stuff. Hey, I went to camp when I was a kid. I'm like 68 now, but I went to camp when I was a kid. And I got baptized then, so I'm good. I don't need to, but it's been 50 years since they've sought the Lord, right? They haven't sought God in a long, long, long time. They're not cracking a Bible. They're not attending a church service. They're not nothing.

And what Jesus says is that when you stop seeking, when you presume that you've somehow reached the end of this journey, that you are spiritual enough, that you're mature enough, that there's not much really else for you to learn, that that's actually one of the worst places to be because even what you have will be taken away. So how do we apply this? How do we kind of start pushing this together? Well look, they build on each other. They build on each other. So let me just recap it real quick. Jesus is hiding amazing things, right? Where is he hiding them? He's hiding them in ordinary things. We can seek and find those things when we wrestle them personally.

These things that we find literally change our mind. They reorganize our categories of what is good or bad or spiritual or not spiritual, worth it or not. And when our mind is changed, what happens is we kind of, we really are stripped of all of our religious effort, our moral effort and what happens. We begin to see Jesus more clearly. We begin to worship him for who he is. We begin to find, to discover that he's been working in our lives all along. And as we do, as we seek, as we find, we gain more. As we seek to understand who Jesus is, we find out more of who Jesus is. I was talking with a guy this week. And then, he's not a believer. He's not walking with the Lord. But we ran into each other at a party without knowing each other. We just started talking and he was really kind of curious about spiritual things. And so I said, hey, let's, so we had literally a four, five minute conversation.

It wasn't long at all. But he seemed to really kind of be interested in spiritual things. And so, I went to England and I came back and I called him. And I said, hey man, look, we met at that party. I don't know if you remember it. And he's like, oh yeah. And that guy rattles off about 20 minutes of his life. What he's dealing with, what he's going on, what he's, and at the end, he says something interesting to me. He says, hey, you know, look,

I really feel like I can open up to you. And I don't know why that is. I really feel like I'm being unburdened. He didn't say it this way, but he was effectively trying to say this. I feel like a big weight's off my chest because I can just talk to you and it's normal and I don't feel condemned. And I don't, and that was kind of a new thing for him. Okay? And what I gently had to tell him and remind him of, I said, look, look man, I need you to understand that those feelings you're feeling, that is the joy of the Lord that is coursing through you because you are responding to what he's doing. This isn't me. It's not my charisma. It's not my smile. It's not, you know, my haircut. It's nothing, I mean, my haircut's not even that good. It's not doing it. What is it though? It's the joy of the Lord moving through you because, and I didn't like go off on this, but it has everything to do what we're talking about today

because that brother is trying to seek and find Jesus Christ. He's trying to understand what the Lord is doing in his life and he's just opening up to some stranger at a party who happens to be a pastor and he's like, oh man, I hit the jackpot, right? He's dealing with like PTSD and night terrors and crazy stuff, crazy stuff. At the end of that conversation, I say, hey man, look, let me just pray for you. And I prayed and I'm still praying. And if you want, you can pray for him too. We're gonna be talking about a week. And I hope that the Lord has seriously subsided or delivered him from night terrors. That's what I'm praying for. That's what I'm hoping that the Lord would show him his power. Look, what that guy's embarking on, maybe for the first time in his life, is what the Lord Jesus Christ invites us all to embark upon every single day. Jesus Christ is working right now

through the Holy Spirit in your life. He's putting things together, he's making things happen, he's connecting things, and you don't see it. I don't see it. It's hard, it's hard for us to see those things. And it's not hard necessarily because they're invisible. It's hard because we're distracted. It's hard because we're looking at all these other things that seem really important to us. But what Jesus is doing, he's pulling our attention and he's saying, look, it's right there. Look at this ordinary thing. It looks so small, it looks so insignificant, but there's something amazing happening there. If only you would seek, if only you would find, then you would see it. Everything, everything begins and ends in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Even how you see your own life begins and ends in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. You don't graduate from seeking and finding.

And look, as we kind of close our service, I want to extend that invitation to you and I want you to think about what is the Lord Jesus calling you to investigate today? Where is he calling you to seek and to find? Are you kind of bypassing maybe some ordinary things thinking, no, no, no, it's not there. That's been there the whole time and nothing's happened. No, look, maybe the Lord Jesus is calling you to do a deep dive on something that's been there the whole time.

Maybe there's just, maybe there's a lamp that you light every day that you don't even think of. But it's there. After our service, not during, you know, not during the service, after the service, I'll be right over here. If you want to talk, if you want some prayer, I'll be right over here just waiting, just standing there and I would love to talk to you about maybe what that next step, how to seek and find. How to discover kind of what Jesus is doing in your life. For some of you, you feel stuck. You're just there. You're just frustrated and stuck and you don't know what's next. Look, come talk to me. Talk to somebody. I mean, look, I'm here, but there's a lot of people here you can talk to. And begin to take some next steps on what that is. Begin to understand how to get, not just unstuck, but how to seek and find on a regular basis. Doing ordinary things, indirect things,

things that don't even seem to add up, but they do. They add up. So even if you have to begin again today, maybe even for the very first time. My encouragement is do it, don't wait. Don't feel like you can just wait until tomorrow. Let's pray. Jesus, thanks so much for all that you do for us, for all that you do in us, all the things that you hide in plain sight, all the ways that we wanna make things just different. We wanna make things fun or exciting.

Oh Lord, you're calling us in the midst of the ordinary. You're calling us in the midst of not amazing things. Lord, help us to seek, help us to seek, help us to pay attention to what we hear and help us to find you there, working, waiting, growing, moving, connecting, ministering to us, interceding for us. In the name that we pray, amen. Amen.