Having gone out to the lakeshore, and having seen the large crowd, Jesus chooses to begin teaching. But where He used to teach lessons from the Law of Moses, Jesus now begins teaching using a much more indirect method. He is done arguing with the Pharisees, who listen in to His every teaching from the Law and compare it to their own interpretation. From this day on, Jesus will restrict His plain teaching to the few who know Him already, and steer His public ministry toward simpler, less ‘educated’ people. To do so effectively, He adopts the use of parables. Parables are stories that have more than one level of meaning.
Jesus’ parables have been food for thought for two thousand years. On a surface level, virtually every culture, age and person understands what Jesus is saying. That is because the parables Jesus told use timeless illustrations from everyday life. They have a literal textual meaning, which usually is clearly understood – but also clearly not the purpose of saying it. Then there is another meaning, which is the whole point of the parable and is clearly the reason the story is being told to start with. Jesus’ parables are pragmatic, common sense stories that evoke an awareness of a more profound truth.
He begins with, “A farmer went out to sow his seed.” As one commentator put it, “In line with typical ancient practice we are to imagine the seed being scattered by hand from a bag slung over the shoulder. The question of what margin of accuracy could reasonably be expected of such a sowing method will be of some importance […] for exploring the dynamic of the story. The typical sower in first-century Palestine was a subsistence farmer with a limited plot of land at his disposal.”
Of course, today most people are not farmers. While in Jesus’ day most were, today the great majority of people live in cities – a trend that is only accelerating. Farming is the activity of the few rural people left, not the many as it used to be in Christ’s day. Many have never even visited a farm, let alone sown seed. Besides which, modern farmers use efficient machinery – they know better than to ‘waste’ seeds by hand distribution. Yet even a child knows that to grow food, you need to “sow” seed by somehow placing it in a growing medium – ideally fertile earth. Today we teach this to children as a function of a science class instead of subsistence living, but in God’s providence they learn it all the same.
“The parables are not merely illustrations for Jesus’ preaching; they are the preaching, at least to a great extent. Nor are they simple stories; they have been truly described as both “works of art” and “weapons of warfare.”” They are works of art in that the picture He paints, He paints for a purpose. They are weapons of warfare in that the story He tells, He tells to free people from their present worldview.
As a master teacher, Jesus finds examples in everyday life that communicate something of the Kingdom to come. He contextualizes the teaching method to the people He is instructing. We must do likewise to reach those He is sending us, and those He sends us to.
As Barclay puts it, Jesus’ parables “were designed to make one stabbing truth flash out at a man the moment he heard it.
Leon Morris
APPLICATION: Intentionality
Everyday illustrations are powerful tools of communication. How often do you use them?