Jesus’ Strategic Use of Language in Parables

SPEAKER 01 : 0:00

Greetings to the brightest audience in the country and welcome to Bob Benyart Live. Today we’re going to a sermon that Bob gave on parables and short-term misdirection. There are times in the Bible where Jesus would speak in parables and it says, lest the people should turn and be healed. And this has caused a lot of confusion for a lot of Christians. Why would Jesus speak in parables? Why would he speak in a way? That’s difficult for unbelievers to understand. And so this sermon from my father, Pastor Bob Enyart, tackles that issue. Now let’s jump right into it.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:42

Today’s sermon is titled Parables and Short-Term Misdirection. That’s a little confusing, no? That title, the meaning may not be obvious to everyone what the message is about. Parables and short-term misdirection. So before we talk about it, let me present a different issue, different than why Jesus spoke in parables. Let’s think about something else for a moment. When the Lord said that if you love him, you must hate your mother and father. That was a Hebrew idiom, a figure of speech. And it illustrated the enormous difference between loving God and loving someone else on earth. The commitment… between those two should be so wide that you should love God so much that in comparison, it’s as though you hated other people. It doesn’t mean you hate them, but in comparison. Do you understand that Hebrew idiom of love and hate? That’s what that means. Because God commands us, of course, to love one another, to love our families, to love our neighbors, even to love our enemies. So, of course, Jesus wants you to love your mother and your father. But imagine if some cult, let’s say Scientologists, they often pry people away from their parents, from their family. So let’s say you had some cult. And they really weren’t interested in understanding the passage, but they would use it frequently to justify their members’ mistreatment of their own family members. So it could become one of their favorite passages because they really do want people to hate their parents so that their members would be willing to reject their own family members and never even see them again. See how you could take a verse in the Bible be uninterested in what it really means, and use it, it could become one of your favorite proof texts for your own false teaching. Okay, likewise, some Christians end up with odd favorite passages that they use to justify their theology. Like, God hated baby Esau when he was still in the womb. There you have it, right? Remember Will Duffy, in his debate with Calvinist Matt Slick, asked Matt, Matt, do you think that God hated this baby while he was still in the womb? And Matt said, yes. There you have it, right? God hates babies. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? It’s a beautiful theology. Well, no, it’s not beautiful. It’s twisting the scriptures, taking something wrong, and then using it in a terrible way so you can argue that it supports your doctrine. Likewise, other verses have become odd favorite passages. After being twisted, taken out of context, and misunderstood, as, for example, when God hardens people’s hearts, or you did not choose me, I chose you, or I speak in parables so that they will not understand, so that they will not believe, these become favorite verses. It is as peculiar… that such verses have become favorite passages as if you must hate your mother and father had become someone’s favorite passage in proof text. Similar. Jesus used some parables for short-term misdirection. Matt Slick quoted from Matthew 13 to Will about Jesus using parables so that people shall not understand lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears lest they should understand. Okay, now that very serious topic, what did the Lord mean by that? was turned into the funniest moment of the debate when, as we saw, we showed a video clip a few weeks ago on Sunday morning when Will quoted Matt Slick’s words right back to him. And Will said, what does this mean? And Matt Slick, it’s a figure of speech and I don’t know what it means. And the whole audience burst out in laughter. It was really funny. But what does it mean? When arguments are being thrown fast and furious, the debate setting doesn’t allow for full answers. And I loved it that Will used that opportunity to demonstrate how easy it is for those who dismiss hundreds of verses as figures of speech to do so, and then act as though those verses don’t even exist. Now, this past month, Will and I and, in fact, many of you and folks around the country have been discussing, including on the radio where we’ve been airing and analyzing many highlights of the debate, we’ve been discussing including this aspect. So far, about 4,000 people have watched the first debate and over 2,000 people have watched the second debate and there have been thousands of comments on the two. Now, we have been discussing this subject of the parable of the sower, and Jesus’ disciples coming to him after he tells the parable, and they ask, why are you speaking in parables? And he answered, so that they will not understand. So we’ve been talking about this, and we’ve made four observations. Four. These four observations, only the fourth tells you, we think, what it means. The first three, each of them are sufficient to show it doesn’t mean what is often claimed, that God does not want many people to understand. The first three tells us that it doesn’t mean that, but only the fourth, we think, tells us what it actually means. So let’s go through this. The four observations, the first is misdirection. There was misdirection so that some of the hearers would not understand the meaning of the parable. That misdirection was not long-term, it was short-term. Now, why do we say that? Because that misdirection, if you will, does not apply to today. It only applied back then. Now how do we know that? Because the interpretation of the parable was put into the Bible. Now think about that. You have the parable of the sower. And then you have the disciples saying, Jesus, why do you speak in parables? And he says, so that people will not understand the parable. And then it says, let me explain to you the parable. And he explains it. He interprets the whole parable. So if the purpose was so that people would not understand, why put the interpretation right in the Bible? Wouldn’t that be crazy? That would be like during World War II getting Navajo code talkers so that the Japanese couldn’t figure out the messages we were sending and then saying, by the way, here’s what they said. I mean, you wouldn’t do that, right, if your purpose was really so that they wouldn’t understand. If Jesus didn’t want certain people to be able to understand the interpretation of his parables, then he would not have put those interpretations into the Bible itself so that over time, millions of unbelievers could simply read the interpretation. If speaking in parables was designed so that unbelievers could not understand and so that they could not believe in the gospel to be saved, then it is awfully peculiar that the parable of the sower is then explained. Right there in the same chapter, immediately after Jesus saying, I’m doing this so that they can’t understand the meaning of it. So what’s the purpose of speaking in code so that those outside could not understand and then explaining it, interpreting it in black and white and laying it out explicitly? What’s the purpose of that? When Jesus interpreted his parable and put that in the Bible, that tells us that the real reason was not so that unbelievers wouldn’t understand the meaning. We know that that’s not the real reason. So that’s the first of the four observations, and we’ll talk more about that one in a bit. So first, that the code talk aspect of the parables was short-term and had little to do with the long-term, with the ability of unbelievers over the last 2,000 years to understand what Jesus was talking about. Notice though, that observation doesn’t really explain the reason why Jesus spoke in parables. All it does is it observes that whatever the reason was, it was fulfilling a short-term need, not a long-term one. Our second observation, and this one also doesn’t explain why Jesus spoke like this, but this observation regarding the claim that God does not want everyone to believe, that only those decreed can be saved, the second observation, it neutralizes the use of this passage as a proof text for limited atonement, for election, and all such Scrooge-like doctrines. If in fact no one can believe unless they were decreed to believe, why would Jesus have to take special measures to make sure that they couldn’t believe? Do you get that point? Think about that. You see, the Calvinist use of this passage is contradicted by their own Calvinism. Truth is non-contradictory. But when you build the belief system, whether you realize it or not, on falsehoods, you’re going to end up contradicting yourself every time you turn around. And the bigger your system becomes, the more you try to use it to explain things, the more you will contradict yourself. So if no one can believe unless they have been eternally decreed to believe, Why would Jesus have to speak in parables so that they wouldn’t believe? What in the world would that be about? They couldn’t believe because they’re not decreed to believe. It doesn’t matter what he did or said, they could not believe. Why would that be necessary? Why would it be important if that were the case? If Jesus were actually speaking in a way so as to prevent some people from getting saved, then that makes their doctrine of irresistible grace unnecessary, and it would outright refute the doctrines of total depravity in election if this was necessary. So that’s our second of four observations. First, that the co-talk aspect of the parables was short-term and not long-term. And second, that Calvinism would be disproved if Jesus spoke in parables so that those he did not elect would not believe. Okay, then the third observation. And this too doesn’t get us to why Jesus spoke in code, in parables. Like the first observation, all this does, but it is a valuable service, is to further constrain the realm of possibilities of what this actually may mean, why Jesus spoke in parables. The third observation is that elsewhere, in the Gospels and frequently Jesus spoke directly and plainly giving people the information they would need to believe. Now is that true or false? If Jesus spoke in parables really so that the unelect could not understand and could not believe, then why elsewhere would he speak so plainly and to so many? For example, in John chapter eight, Jesus said in public and to the Pharisees who hated him. John 8, 23. I am from above. You are from this world. I am not of this world. Therefore, I said to you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I am he, you will die in your sins. It’s pretty clear. Any parable in there? And he figures the speech even, just very direct. It’s explicit. And that’s to the huge crowd that had gathered at the temple, including many unbelievers. And he was speaking directly to the hateful Pharisees and to the scribes, as the chapter says. And he says, if you do not believe in me, you will die in your sin. Not a parable. No code talk. That’s flat out explicit. Then six chapters later, in John chapter 14, Jesus says, let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. And then he added, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. Is that a parable? A lot of parables stuck in there? No. Jesus is being explicit so that those who hear would have the information they need to believe or not to believe, to understand. No secret wording. Jesus said that in Judas’ hearing. So why be explicit if he had to speak in parables so that unbelievers could not believe? then this clear talk, this kind of talk would ruin everything potentially. How about John 3.16? That’s in the Bible. It’s flat out right there. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Very explicit, no figures of speech, just straightforward words. theology on what you must do to be saved. Again, this third observation is that Jesus frequently spoke directly and plainly, giving everyone who heard the explicit information what they would need to believe. In another example, the rabbis of the synagogues, they didn’t especially love Jesus. Many have over the millennia, but generally speaking, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, they were not his supporters. Yet Matthew writes that Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom. Why would Jesus preach the gospel publicly and in the synagogues where some were so hard-hearted if he had to speak in code so that those who were not chosen couldn’t understand and could not believe? Matthew tells us that Jesus did this in his chapter 4 and his chapter 9. Then in chapter 11, we’re told that the lepers… cleansed and the poor have the gospel preached to them yet remember that one occasion where ten lepers were healed and only one even said thank you to Jesus remember that so these are not necessarily all the elect they’re just people who are encountering Jesus and they’re experiencing healing Yet Jesus and his disciples went about preaching the gospel. Twice during his three years of earthly ministry, Jesus, once he called his 12 disciples together and he sent them to preach, this is in Luke 9, so they departed and went through the towns preaching the gospel. Another time, Jesus sent out the 70, 70 of his disciples to go to the villages of Israel to preach. Mark says that Jesus went throughout Galilee preaching the gospel. And in his last chapter, he writes, and this of course is under Israel’s covenant of circumcision, under the Sabbaths and the dietary law and baptism, he writes, Very straightforward. Very straightforward. We could go on and on, right? All the verses where God is making it clear to the public at large of the elements of the gospel, of believing, trusting in Jesus Christ. Not only in the four gospels when Jesus was speaking, but how about throughout the whole Bible? How about in Paul’s epistles? How about in Romans 9 and Ephesians 2 when the gospel is explicitly stated? Doesn’t that put God’s whole plan at risk because now unbelievers will be able to understand and believe? Of course not. So of the four observations, we’ve looked at the first three. First, that the code talk aspect of the parables was short term. Second, that Calvinism would be disproved if Jesus had to speak in parables to make sure that the unelect would not believe. And third, that Jesus didn’t always speak in parables and frequently he was just completely explicit and plain talking about the gospel. But none of these three observations explain to us why Jesus spoke in code. But they provide a great service. As any good hermeneutic would do, any valid tool for interpreting the Bible, these observations, they constrain the possible range of meaning so that we could understand what’s going on here. The fourth observation. This is the one that will help us understand why Jesus did this. You interpret Scripture… by scripture, in context. So let’s remember the other examples in the four gospels where Jesus did things to prevent his enemies from more fully comprehending what was going on. Because that’s the key here. The things that Jesus did and said so that his enemies would not more fully comprehend what was going on so that they couldn’t put up a united front and resist his plans. Think of the things that Jesus said and did before the final days of his earthly ministry. Remember that when his disciples went to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles, we’re told in John chapter 7 that Jesus went also, but he went in secret. Remember that? In Matthew chapter 8, after healing a man with leprosy, Jesus said to him, see that you don’t tell anyone. Isn’t that interesting? Why heal him and then say don’t tell anyone? The Lord did that frequently. He would heal people and then tell them don’t tell anyone. Now we don’t know how many times he did that, but in the four gospels we read that that happened in Matthew chapter 12, Mark chapter 1, chapter 5, chapter 7, chapter 9, in Luke chapter 5, in Luke chapter 8. Jesus heals people and says, don’t tell anybody. Why would Jesus say don’t tell anyone? Think about that, right? When Jesus says, if you’re going to follow me, you have to hate your mother and father. He expects us to think about it. To think, not to just be lazy and let words hit us in the face and say, oh, who can tell what this means? He expects us to think so that we’re on the same page that he is on. Remember when Jesus cast demons out of many and the demons cried out and said, you are the Christ, the son of God. What did he do? He rebuked them and said, don’t tell anybody that I am the Christ. Don’t tell anyone. The way he handled that situation was very similar. That was in Luke 4. But in Matthew 16, remember Jesus asked the disciples, who do people say that I am? And they answered him. And then he said, well, who do you say that I am? And then Peter answered, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God. And Jesus replied, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Why? Isn’t that the whole purpose of the whole thing? Why? The reason is… And this will explain why Jesus spoke in parables about certain aspects of the kingdom. The reason Jesus said do not tell anyone is that, and this is one of the themes of the four gospels, Jesus was avoiding a premature conflict with Rome. You get that? Eventually the Roman governor would have him crucified. But he had three years of earthly ministry to complete. He wanted to train these apostles so that they could take over when he ascends into heaven. So it wouldn’t do for his purpose to have them come and arrest him in the first month and then put him to death. That was not his purpose. he was avoiding a premature conflict with Herod and even with Caiaphas. That’s why, for example, in Luke chapter 20, when the chief priest asked Jesus, where do you get your authority from? He refused to answer them. It wasn’t because he doesn’t want unbelievers to hear the answer to that question. At other times in his ministry, the answer to that was obvious from the things that he said. And he even put the answer to that now in the Bible for millions of unbelievers to read for themselves. This theme of temporarily hiding his purposes is an open theism theme You can’t even understand this major flow of the events in the four gospels unless you realize that the future is open and people are free to respond to God either in love and humility and obedience or in hatred and trying to thwart the Lord’s plan. People are free to respond either way. The future could have been very different. if Jesus had gone around saying for three years, I am the Messiah and I will be crucified by Pontius Pilate. If he had said that everywhere he went for three years, don’t you think that the high priest might take notice in the Sanhedrin? And even Pontius Pilate, who had spies out on the street, and they would report back to him, this guy’s saying that you’re going to crucify him. That’s his whole plan. And so what’s… The high priest’s father-in-law, Annas, the Sanhedrin, what would they make of that? They’d say, we’re not going to play into his hand and make people think that he knew what was going on. So maybe we’ll arrest him. Maybe we’ll send him in exile to Patmos. Maybe we’ll send him down to Rome or just keep him in prison or just ignore him even. But there’s no way we’re going to arrest him and have him crucified because that’s what he wants to happen. So Jesus brilliantly walked a narrow road, reaching the masses with his message, but frequently being coy enough so that the opposition against him would be confused and thwarted until the last few days before the cross when he provoked them so severely by publicly raising Lazarus from the dead a few minutes outside of Bethlehem, two miles there in Bethany, raising him from the dead in front of what a crowd. And then by taking authority over the temple itself, remember?

SPEAKER 01 : 28:07

Stop the tape, stop the tape. Hey, we are out of time here on today’s show. If you want all of Bob Enyart’s sermons, including this one, this was his sermon from 2017, December 31st, Bob Enyart’s sermon, Parables and Short-Term Misdirection. You can get that by going to enyart.shop. and sign up for the Bob Enyart sermons. You do not want to miss that. So many fun sermons there, theologically rich. Not just shallow sermons about how Jesus vaguely loves you. No, it’s actually answering in-depth Bible questions, questions that a lot of churches, they kind of shy away from. So you do not want to miss that. Again, enyart.shop, E-N-Y-A-R-T dot S-H-O-P.