#DailyDevotion Jesus Taught In Parables To Not Be Understood
Luke 8:9-10 9His disciples asked Him what this parable meant. 10“You are given the privilege to know the mysteries of God’s kingdom,” He answered, “but to the others they come in parables that they may see and yet not see, and hear and yet not understand.”
You may get rankled because of what I am about to say. It’s because preachers who like telling fanciful stories in their sermons have been telling you something about Jesus parables for at least a few decades now that just isn’t true. In fact I was in a coffee shop the other day and a young man parroted to me this misinformation. What is this I am talking about? Some preachers for a few decades or more have been telling people Jesus taught in parables so that people could more easily understand them. Nothing can be further from the truth, particularly in the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark & Luke).
Just open your eyes and see what Jesus just said in verse 10 here, “but to the others they come in parables that they may see and yet not see, and hear and yet not understand.” Even the disciples didn’t understand what Jesus was talking about. They had to go to him privately and be taught by him what the parables meant. Thankfully, a number of the meaning of the parables the Gospel writers recorded for us or else we wouldn’t understand what Jesus was talking about either.
Now when Jesus says this he is quoting from Isaiah call in Isaiah 6, “9Go and tell these people: You may go on hearing but never understand, I and go on seeing but never know anything.’ 10Make the heart of these people sluggish, deafen their hearing, shut their eyes that they may not see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” It is fairly evident as Jesus quotes this passage from Isaiah, Jesus is not teaching in parables so that people could understand them. As a continuation and fulfillment of Isaiah’s commission parables made people’s hearts sluggish, deafened their hearing, shut their eyes and ears and bring them to repentance. Now a lot of people enjoyed listening to these parables, probably because they were entertaining. They however were not understanding what they heard.
Isaiah asked, “How long?” The LORD responded, “13And still there will be a tenth of the people left in it, and it, too, will be taken away. But like a terebinth or an oak when it’s cut down, it will have a stump left – its stump will be a holy seed.” While we think this took place in Isaiah day and Jeremiah’s day (and there was certainly some of that) think the destruction of Jerusalem and the Bar Kochba war. The stump and holy seed is Jesus and the Church. Do we understand Jesus’ parables? I dare say to some extent. We in the New Testament have Jesus’ explanation to many of the parables. The disciples handed them down to us so we could understand them. To the parables they did not leave an interpretation, we should then take the explanation of those Jesus did give us and use them to understand they ones he didn’t explain. So with the parable of the sower we can look to other parables to teach God wants the Gospel to go out to all people. Some won’t get it all, some will believe it but fall away from persecution or temptations of the world and some will remain faithful to Christ unto the end. Thank God he gives us his Holy Spirit and the Word of Christ so we may understand, repent and believe in Christ and in the Father and live.
Heavenly Father, always give us your Holy Spirit so we may see, hear, understand, repent and believe Jesus’ Word so we may have eternal life. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.