The Parables
of Matthew
We just
spent 28 weeks working our way through the gospel of Matthew. In the next service I will give you the 30,000-foot
flyover. In this service we will focus
on some of the parables.
A parable
sets things in parallel. I use a form of
parallelism which I take things that I know and can explain first hand from the
Marine Corps and compare them with some scripture.
I also like
to make parallels with sports. Baseball
and football give me the most to work with.
I have yet to use anything from badminton, but I’m not through preaching
yet, so don’t write it off.
The man
who doubts is like a shuttlecock batted around the court on a windy day. OK, I will probably stick with a
wave tossed about the sea.
My baseball
and football parallels were of absolutely no value when I went to Africa. I
don’t do soccer. The only year that I
watched my daughter play, it looked like a swarm of kids moving all over the
field. I suspected there was a ball in
the middle of the swarm.
Jesus was
the only person who had walked the earth that had also been in heaven. He explained things we had never seen or did
not understand in terms of things that we had.
Let’s take
the Parable of the Sower or the Seed or the Soil, depending on what part you
want to emphasize. Jesus knew that his
word was true and that our hearts are so often corrupt, but when our heart is
receptive to the word of God, it can produce a fantastic yield.
When our
hearts are good soil, the word of God flourishes in us.
Jesus told
us that we would struggle in this world.
The Evil One is at work in the work.
The Enemy has sown weeds with the wheat but both will be allowed to grow
to the harvest. As we look at the
explanation, there will be a sorting at the end of the age. God’s angels will sort out his children from
amidst the weeds.
It’s for our
benefit so we have a chance to grow before the harvest. We should not
worry. God and his angels can tell the
difference.
Jesus taught
that once you realize what the kingdom of heaven is and that you can live there
now, you will do whatever it takes to enter it.
Buy a field to claim its treasure, sell everything to buy a pearl of
great value, or pluck the bad fish out of your catch and keep only the good
ones.
You can
enter the kingdom of heaven now and there will be a sorting at the end of the
age.
Jesus
explained the kingdom of heaven with the Parable of the Unmerciful
Servant. This servant had a debt that he
could never repay. He could hit the
Powerball lottery and still not have enough to repay the debt; yet his master
forgave the debt.
This servant
did not pay this forward. He did not
show the same forgiveness as his master.
The master heard about this and restored the debt and executed the
punishment.
God is
serious about this forgiveness business.
Check out what Jesus had to say about
forgiveness right
after he modeled what we call the Lord’s Prayer.
The Parable
of the Two Sons is about words and deeds.
One son says he will do what his father wants but doesn’t. The other says he won’t, but then decides
that he will. Even the knuckleheaded
Pharisees understood this one.
It was
obviously the one whose actions not words did what the father desired.
The Parables
of the Tenants and the Wedding Banquet are likely allegorical with Jews and
Gentiles getting their chance to receive the grace of God.
The Parable
of the Ten Virgins speaks of being ready.
Remember the Coast Guard motto: Semper
Paratus—Always Ready.
And then we
come to the Parable of the Talents. By
now, you should know this one by heart.
I think next year, Matthew 25:14-30 will be one of our memory verses.
What did you do with what God gave
you?
Then, of
course, we get to the sheep and the goats.
The question that we should ask ourselves is: What did we do for the least of these
brothers and sisters among us?
What did we do for the least of these?
Jesus humbled himself and stepped out
of heaven. He humbled himself to such an extent that he
came as a baby. He lived as a human
lives, needed food and water and shelter and care, but he had known heaven and
the kingdom of God.
He wanted to
share that with us. He did that by
teaching, preaching, healing, and many miracles but he also put in parallel the
things of heaven and things that we understood here on earth.
He wanted us
to know and understand the kingdom of God before we got there. Parables are more than stories with a
moral. They are more than examples. They open our eyes to see and our ears to
hear the things of the kingdom of God and the way of our Lord.
They leave
us hungry to learn more.
Amen.
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