Episode 72 Matthew 13 Parables

Dan: (00:00)
Hi, everyone. And welcome to training for life redeemed. I’m your host, Dan. I am joined again by my father, David Jackson. We are continuing to look through the book of Matthew today. We’re up to chapter 13 Dad. Now chapter 13 is a great chapter for us to talk about parables. Yep. How they work, why Jesus spoke in parables. I mean, it says in this chapter, you know, verse 35 that he spoke in parables because he was fulfilling prophecy, basically that he would speak in parables. Other things hidden, ever since the world foundation of the world. So basically is Jesus then just sharing a whole bunch of hidden things and secrets through parables? Is that not why he is speaking in parables? Is he trying to keep things hidden? Is he making them really clear? Cuz I mean these days we use parables to make things really obvious for people. what, what’s the point of parables? What, what are we doing?

David: (00:51)
Okay. Parable is you can translate the word parable as either a riddle or a proverb. So it’s either some, you know, punchy little line, like the book of Proverbs or in this case, it’s riddles, we’re speaking in riddles. This is cryptic crossword country. So I think the best way to understand this, I, he, he says, I’m speaking in parables to those on the outside to keep them confused so that they won’t believe. And everybody goes, what Jesus is out there trying to make people not believe in him.

Dan: (01:28)
Oh definitely. Some of them. Yeah. Not know. No, it’s more not know who he is because

David: (01:34)
Yeah. He’s keeping them in the dark and he’s deliberately confusing them by telling them riddles. And so, I mean, you imagine here comes the guy who claim, people think might be the Messiah, right? He’s been up on the hill, teaching his disciples all about the nature of the kingdom of God, blessed are the peacemakers. And then we come down here and we heal everybody that turns up that’s sick or crooked or crippled or whatever. He’s done all these miracles. He’s done all this teaching and we’re gonna walk, you know, couple of hours to go and hear this great teacher. And what does he tell us? He tells us a story about a guy who’s farming, Chucking seed around

Dan: (02:14)
The case by birds. And that’s, it dies from the silent.

David: (02:16)
Yeah. You know, there, there was these threw seed in four different places and that’s what happened and end of the sermon and you go, what, what are we talking about? And Jesus just walks away from that. Now

Dan: (02:32)
I,

David: (02:33)
To understand parables, I I’ll go back to a bloke who was at Sydney University and he was trying to research a particular aspect of language and he gave it a name. He called it anti language. And I, it, it helped me hugely to understand parables. What he did was he went to a Polish prison why you go there anyway, goes to a Polish prison. And he looks at the language that prisoners use. So the prisoners had made up their own virtual vocabulary. But what it was was they used ordinary everyday words and they gave them their own secret meaning. So, you know, we, we can see this teenagers do it. you realize that any oppressed people, any minority, anybody who’s doesn’t want the big wigs to know what we’re talking about. Users coded language, in London, it used to be the, the Cockneys made up rhyming slang. You know, you go down the rub rubbery and you know, talk about your old Chi, meet your old China. and all this sort of stuff. If you don’t know the code, it, it makes no sense.

Dan: (03:53)
It’s kind of Like when the English speak proper English that no one understands . Yeah.

David: (03:57)
Yeah. But, but here’s the thing we’re using ordinary everyday words. So what’s a pork pie,

Dan: (04:05)
The pie that you eat

David: (04:06)
That’s Porky. Right? Except that in Cockney slang, it’s a lie. Yeah. Pie rhymes with lie. Don’t tell porkies, you know, if you don’t know the code, you can’t understand what it’s talking about. Yeah. So Anti language teenagers use it. They have all their little, you know, in words that they use, we call it, I think it’s urban slang. Yeah. The urban slang dictionary. And if you don’t know what the urban slang is, then the teenagers are able to have great conversations. And mum and dad, haven’t got a clue what’s going on. But one of the things that you don’t do, if you’re a gospel minister is you don’t try and talk to people, the generation younger in their code. Cause that violates , you know, you’re, you’re trying to be somebody you’re not, Jesus is using anti language. He’s using his own code and it serves to make the people in power look stupid cuz they don’t get it.

David: (05:03)
And it also communicates to the people who are the minority that they’re trying to persecute. So prisoners in prison have it, they refer to a warden, a prison guard as a screw mm-hmm well a screw’s an ordinary word, but now it has a different meaning. yeah. So Jesus is gonna tell these stories, theyré code. Where’s the code book. How do you crack the code? Well, the code is the old Testament. So all of these parables that he’s telling all these riddles, you can decode them. If you go back to the word of God and the scriptures. So look at a word like seed and you go back to the old Testament and you find out that that’s connected to God planting his people in his land. and you can find all this plantation language in the old Testament. And how many parables does Jesus tell about plantations? yeah. You know, plantation managers, farming planted my vine, all that farming industry. It’s all coded from the old Testament. You wanna talk about weddings? how many parables did he tell about weddings? Go back to the old Testament and you look at Israel as his bride. Yeah. if you know the code, this all makes perfect sense, but here’s the joke. These are great Bible teachers the day they know their old Testament and that doesn’t make any sense.

Dan: (06:22)
Yeah. If it doesn’t fit their perspective,

David: (06:25)
It doesn’t fit their perspective. There’s a little link missing. And the missing Jesus calls the mystery, the hidden thing is not revealed to them, but I’m revealing it to you. And as you go through the rest of the new Testament, the mystery is actually Jesus and who he is. If you know who Jesus is that unlocks the old Testament and it unlocks the new Testament and it unlocks all of these parables. So he here’s Jesus and his little gang talking in riddles, in anti language. Yeah. And all these big wigs who’s supposed to know. The Bible are all standing around going, what’s he talking about? And it means that they haven’t got the goods to arrest him yet. He’s keeping the powers be at a arms length, very clever stuff.

Dan: (07:15)
Well dad, thank you for that’s.

David: (07:17)


Dan: (07:18)
Make parable’s nice and easy as a, you know, remembering going through school and the language that was used, how you do it on purpose so that the teachers can’t get you in trouble for thank you for joining us. That is the end of this episode brings us to, this is episode 72. So if you would like to come and grab the study notes and stuff for this episode, you head to trainingforliferedeemed.com/ 72. If you enjoyed it, please leave us a review if you haven’t yet. And also make sure you hit the subscribe button, come back and join us again. Next week, we’re gonna head into chapter 14.