Understanding God's Communication Through Parables

You've probably heard people come to church and, when it was over, say, you know, I didn't get anything out of church today. And then you hear someone else that say, wasn't that wonderful? You may have heard people go to Bible study or Sunday school and they say, you know, I just don't get anything out of Sunday school, I quit going. You hear the people say, man, I love the Sunday school. It means so much to me, it gives me an energy in life and helps me every week that I go. You hear people say, I read the Bible every day and I love it. It just is the, I just can't make my day without reading the Bible. And you hear other people say, I try to read the Bible and I just don't get anything out of it. What's going on? Why is it that in the same setting, in the same situation, people get nothing and then other people suddenly get a life filled with power and the presence of God and a change. The Bible addresses this issue, really. In a passage in Matthew chapter 13 that I'm going to read in just a moment, verse 34, it's kind of sandwiched between two parables. And when I read it, and it was the next section in the scripture that I'm preaching through, I thought, well, this is kind of redundant. Because before, Jesus had been asked by his disciples why he spoke in parables. And he told them, basically, it's because there are some people out there who are not going to do what I tell them, and so I haven't spoke plainly to them. I want them to be able to be interested in hearing what I have to say before I speak. And so, because of their disinterest, I speak in parables. It kind of makes it hard for them to hear. Now he comes back with the same kind of idea. Now, the beginning, you look at this, and I said, well, I don't know if there's anything here worth really our time about. And then all of a sudden, I thought, well, does God have places in the Bible where you can throw them away? Is everything in the Bible really significant for us? And if it's not appearing to be significant for us, maybe it's because we don't see it as significant. Then I thought, you know, whenever God says something once, it's always important, but when he says it twice, then it's really important. So twice in the book of Matthew, he talks about the very same subject, speaking in parables. But here, in this passage, he changes it a little. Before he was talking about the crowds, the people who were outside the disciple group. He spoke to them in parables because he was concerned that they weren't really interested in listening to him. Now he's saying, the rest of this paragraph, the rest of this chapter, he's going to speak to his own disciples, and now he's speaking to them in parables. So there's something significant here about what's taking place. And what is it? Well, it became clear to me, looking at this, that God is telling us something really important. How does God talk to us? What is the secret for you being able to hear God and get some significant message from him, and just coming and hearing a bunch of words? God talks to us, but it takes two people to carry on a conversation. I talk, you listen. You talk, I listen. I write, you read. You write, I read. Takes two of us. But when we turn to God, the dynamics change. Because it's different talking to someone you can see their face and their lips, and you can see their expression, and you can see their body language. It's another to talk to someone you can't see. You can't see their lips. You can't see their body language. It makes it difficult. So God is saying, for you and I to be able to communicate, you have to work at it, and I have to work at it. That's what this passage is about. Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables. He did not say anything to them without a parable. Now, whenever this line in the scripture says that, it doesn't mean that there was not anything that he ever said that wasn't in a parable. He did say some direct things like, come here, let's move on, or get in the boat, or things like that that were direct instructions. But he means in the teachings that he gave them in this setting, he didn't do any of the teaching in this setting that wasn't in parable form. So it was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet. I will open my mouth in parables, and I will utter hidden things since the creation of the world. Now Matthew ties the passage that he's using with the Old Testament. This fulfillment is a prophecy, he said, from the Old Testament. Now he broadens the scheme of what we're talking about. It wasn't just Jesus who used parables, but the parables are part of the prophecy of the Old Testament. So what's taking place in Jesus' setting is exactly what was promised years and years ago. Matthew wants us to understand that this was not a quirk of Jesus' personality. It wasn't that he just liked to tell stories. It wasn't that he thought parables were cute. It was because of the plan of God that he spoke this way. Jesus spoke in ways that was difficult for people to understand, and there was a reason for it. The reason he gave for talking to people outside of his group was, I'm not sure they really want to hear it. The reason he gives for speaking to those inside the group has to be somewhat different, because he knew that the disciples were interested in hearing what he had to say. These two passages, Psalm 78 verse 2, I will open my mouth in parables, and then in Matthew chapter 13 verse 35, I will open my mouth in parables, exactly the same words. The second line is different. I will utter hidden things from old, and in Matthew, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world. Now, sometimes you may read the Bible and you see a note that says this is a reference to the Old Testament, and you go back to the Old Testament and you read it, and the quote from the Old Testament to the New Testament is different. And you think, gosh, didn't they know in the Bible to quote this accurately? But the difference is that the Bible for the Hebrew people in Jesus' day, they had two Old Testaments. They had one that was written in Hebrew, and they had one that was written in Greek. And sometimes the quotes in the New Testament from the Old Testament are from the Hebrew Bible and some from the Greek. In our Bible, all of our quotes from the Old Testament is from the Hebrew Bible, translated from the Hebrew Bible. So in this instance, it's shown up in this second passage, in this second line. I will utter things from old. That's what the Greek Old Testament says. The Hebrew Old Testament says I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world. I mean, the second is the Greek Old Testament. So the Hebrew Old Testament is the first one, and the Greek Old Testament is the second. A little bit of a difference, but not a significant difference about anything. But if you read the Old Testament and the New Testament, you see a quote made, and it's not exactly the same when you look it up, this is why. It's because they used different kinds of Bibles, and they would quote from, sort of like if you spoke Spanish and English very, very well, and you were talking to someone, you might quote the Spanish version of the Bible because it came to your mind, or you might quote the English since it came to your mind. Both would be from the Bible, right? What Jesus is communicating, though, is something very, very important to us. What is it that God does in the process of communicating to us? I will open my mouth and speak in parables. Now the very idea of this is, it's like God doesn't want us to get it, so he tells it in some kind of a secret way so we can't get hold of it. That would make us think that God wasn't interested in communicating with us. But the very next line lets us know, I will utter hidden things. Now the word utter to us is sort of like weak, it seems to me. Now maybe it's not that way to you, but it seems to me like you utter something as sort of a mild way of saying you spoke up quietly or mildly. But really, the word in the Greek Bible is a word that's used for something that squirts like a gusher or like, well, it's actually used when someone throws up. It gushes out of your mouth. Two contrasting ideas. God speaks in parables, so it's hard for us to hear, but when he opens his mouth, he gushes his message out to us. Now it seems strange, doesn't it? Well, I was watching a TV show the other day, it's a detective show. The detective, you know how they always are, they're dedicated and their life is wrapped up in their work and they think about it all the time. So he comes home from work and his wife meets him, she kisses him and says hello, he says hello to her and I mean his mind is preoccupied and you can see in the story how he's doing it. So he goes off and sits down and he's thinking about his work and what's going on and she sees this and so she says, honey, I killed a neighbor today. He says, good honey, it's fine. She says, not till next week, I'm going to run off and marry the postman. He said, fine, fine, that's good. What she was trying to show in this simple story is we don't like to talk to people if they're not listening to us. We don't want to tell them anything that's important if we don't think we have their attention. That's what God is talking about here. I want you to work at the job of listening to me. I'm not going to make this simple and easy. There's some things that I will, like I'll tell you if your cow gets in the neighbor's patch what you're supposed to do about it in great detail because you'll be interested in solving that problem for it before he shoots you. But now it's between you and I, the personal intimate things between us. I don't want to talk to you about these unless you really, really, really want to hear it. So I'm going to tell you the truth, but I'm going to tell it to you in a way that will make you stop and say, what in the world is he talking about? As you read the Bible, sometimes you get to a passage and you read that scripture and you say, what is this about? And then you think, well, I don't know, and you go on and read the next verse. You really weren't interested in hearing what that was about. You just wish you'd understood it first. What God wants whenever we hear his word, whether it's in preaching or in reading the Bible or in a Bible class, is to study what he's saying and be passionately interested in hearing. What the woman wanted when her husband came home from work was to say, how are you? What is your day like? And focus his attention on her and her interest and her needs so she would feel cared about. And if he had done that, she would be willing to talk to him about things that mattered to him and to her. But because he was indifferent to that, she didn't want to. God wants to talk to all of us. I will open my mouth and my message will gush out towards you like an artesian well, like a gusher in an oil well. You'll have so much of my message, you cannot even contain it all. But I speak to you in parables, and unless you're prepared to ask me, what does this mean? That's what Jesus' disciples did in the parable of the sower earlier in this chapter. They said, what does the parable of the sower mean? And then Jesus took a whole passage in the Bible and explained in detail exactly what that parable meant. This is the pattern for us. If you do not understand what God is telling you in the scriptures, ask him. In fact, Jesus said, seek and you will find. But really, in the text, it's a sort of a durative word, keep on seeking and you will find. Keep on knocking and it will be open to you. There is a durative passage that lets us know that God is interested in our questing for what he wants to tell us. So when you read that passage of scripture in the Bible and you say, well, I don't understand quite what that means, what does he want you to do? He wants you to say, God, I don't understand what this means, would you explain it to me? Just like the disciples did, just exactly like they did. Because he wants you to be eager to hear. Now, I don't mean he wants you to be eager to hear out of curiosity. He wants you to be eager to hear out of knowing what to do and how to react to him. So what he wants is for you to say, God, here is something I don't understand. If I could understand this, I would do exactly what you're asking or telling me to do. So I want to know this. And I'm going to sit here and think about this verse, word for word, I'll think of each word and what could that possibly mean. I'm going to think about each word in this verse until you open up what it's really all about. Keep on seeking, keep on seeking, keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, keep on knocking, keep on knocking, and it will be opened to you. That was his promise to us. And that's what Jesus is talking about. I'm speaking to you in ways that are difficult for you to understand because I want you to be interested in hearing what I have to say and come to me and say, God, I want to know this and I'm not going to turn loose until you tell me. I'm going to keep on asking you and keep on thinking about it and keep on searching until you tell me exactly what I need to hear. I want to hear this. Like a thirsty person wants a drink, like a hungry person starving for food wants something to eat. I want to hear it. And then I will send a gusher at you. It will be more than you'll want to hear, really. And whenever God begins to talk to you about what he wants you to do, pretty soon you're saying, wait a minute, God, wait a minute, this is more than I can do. I'll start here with this one and then step by step I'll find the way that you have for me. God's plan for talking to us is illustrated so many times in the Bible. Abraham's a perfect illustration. God came to him and said, Abraham, I want to go to a place that I'm going to show you. He didn't tell him exactly where he was going to go. He said, you won't even know it until you get there. And I tell you, this is it. All he knew was I'm supposed to go. He listened to God. He said, okay, I'll start out. And he started out walking, trying to find that place, wandering from one place to another. God led him here, there, the next place. Finally when he got there, God said, look around you. This is the land I promised to you. Everything here is yours. That's the way it is with your life. When you come to find Christ, you say to him, here is my life. You don't know where you're going to be tomorrow or next week or next year. You don't know where it's going to end up. You don't know the road that you're going to take. But day by day, you read the Bible. Problem by problem, you say to God, what should I do about this? And step by step through your life, he reveals that to you. If you get to the place where you say, God, I have a decision to make and I want you to tell me exactly what the right thing is to do, but in my mind, I've already kind of decided I'm going to do this one. I just want you to kind of confirm what I've already decided. You'll find a silent, silent sound between you and God. Why? Because you're not interested in what he has to say. You only want him to affirm. what you have already on your own decided to do. A parable. I'm not going to tell you the answer until you're ready to hear what I have to say. And when you do, then I will reveal things that are hidden. Now in the parable, in this story in Psalm 78, the beginning of this paragraph or this whole chapter is a story of a man who's writing a song about the history of Israel. Starts out talking about God calling his people. He talks about the exodus and all the things that they've gone through. And this is an example of God revealing things hidden. He doesn't mean by this that God has put things in a hole and covered it up so you can't see it. That's not the idea that's behind this. The idea is that there are some people who know things but they don't understand them. There are some things, there are some people who've seen things but they haven't experienced them. So you may know about something but never have experienced it. You might know, for example, as a guy what childbirth is all about but the women will clearly tell you that you have no knowledge of what it's like until you have a child. Then all of a sudden what was hidden to you is really, really clear and plain. It's a difference between knowledge in your head and experiential knowledge. That is knowledge that you have actually experienced on your part. And so the story of Abraham could be clear to you but until God has said to you I want you to come and follow me and you know he's called you and you know he's asked you to give your life to him and you know you're going to live in obedience to him until you start walking that walk you have no understanding of what Abraham went through. But once God has called you and said come and follow me and then you say yes Lord and you give up the things he wants you to give up and you focus your attention on him and you begin to live daily the way he wants you to, you know exactly what Abraham was going through. You know what it's like to not know what's going to happen next week but to say God I trust you. You know what it's like to say God where's all this going to end? And taking one step after another what was hidden to you before is now revealed and clear to you. See that's what God wants to do. Actually all the stories in the Bible are part of this hidden thing because we read about people and what they did and what they were like and all of a sudden one day we read the scripture and it relates to something we're doing and we have the same experience and we say oh now I understand what that's all about. God has opened his mouth and in his gusher he has revealed what before was hidden from you. It was not your experience. Now this is what God wants to do with every person on the face of this earth. He wants to make sure that every one of us knows everything we need to know about how to live and what to do. He wants to make sure that you have inside of your head and inside of your life every bit of knowledge that you need to have to face life and win and be successful and victorious in every circumstance. He wants that and the way he gives it to us is he says would you come and follow me. I want you to acknowledge that you're not smart enough to live your life, that you're not strong enough to live your life, that you need help. I want you to acknowledge that and I want you to admit that you've been living it doing exactly what you think is right. Not depending on me and in a sense saying ignoring me. I want you to say God you're in charge of this world and I acknowledge that. Now I ask you take my life. You're in charge of my life. I'm going to follow you. I'm going to read what you tell me. I'm going to try to figure it out. I'm going to ask you to tell me what it means and as soon as I know I will do it. Every time I come to an issue in my life where I have to make choices about my life in a substantial way I'm going to say God what do you want me to do and I'm going to wait until you tell me and then I'm going to do it no matter how difficult or hard it is because I trust you. In this scheme then God begins to reveal to you one day at a time everything you need to know to be able to live. To face every problem that you face that you've never faced before and I'll tell you there are big ones out there. There are problems that are so overwhelming that we just cannot ever figure out exactly how to make it work but what he does is he says today you do this, tomorrow you do this, the next day you do this and the first thing you know you're through them. You don't know how you did it. You weren't smart enough to figure this out but what happened was day by day God told you and people look at your life and say how did you do that and you say I don't know I just did what I thought God wanted me to do and look at this result. What God is doing in this passage is telling us something about how he talks to us. I will talk to you he says but it's not going to be like reading it in a newspaper. You have to want to hear it. You have to be passionate to know what I want you to do. You have to be like a man who's hungry and thirsty and needs this more than anything in all the world and when I see you're really interested in listening to me and following me then I will spout out to you everything you need to know and even more and every time you come to me and you say oh God I don't understand what this means you wait if you're passionate and anxious and you'll listen I'll tell you. Every issue you come to in your life and you say I don't know what to do God people tell me this and this and this and this what am I supposed to do? People say life is complicated. It's not really that complicated unless you want it to be. You have a decision to make. Your friends tell you one thing other friends tell you another. Family tells you one thing you want another. That gets complicated. How do you satisfy all those people? But if you've chosen to start following God you simply say God what do you want me to do? And whatever he tells you you do that even if your friends get mad at you your family thinks you're stupid and even if it seems to you like it's a foolish thing to do. Because Jesus Christ is my Lord. It's simple then. You have only one voice but you have to be passionate to get that voice. That's the point. You have to be concerned and surrender to him before he will tell you. Have you ever tried to teach somebody something that didn't want to learn? It is really frustrating. God does not endure that frustration. If you don't want to learn he just won't talk to you. If you're not interested in doing it he'll be quiet. And the moment you say okay God I really want to hear. And your heart is hungry for it. You will find the gusher and what was before unclear to you now becomes plain and simple and clear. What Matthew is telling us is what God has done from the Garden of Eden to today. This is the way he talks to his people. He talks to those who want to hear and if you want to hear and you will ask him and you will keep on asking he will never. I'll say this again so you get it. He will never refuse to tell you. Well you say I've asked him a lot of times and he just doesn't. Okay. Check your passion to hear. Do you really really really want to hear him or have him confirm what you already decided? And look at your life. Are you really prepared to obey him and everything he does? You know if your child comes in and says I have a issue that I want to have a question I want to ask something I want to do and you've told them something else to do and they haven't done it. Generally as a parent you'll say I'll deal with this issue when you go back and do exactly what I told you to do before. God does the very same thing. He wants to know by our life that we're ready to do what he's asked by looking to see if you did the last thing I told you and then he will uncover what the next step is. This has been true from times of old or from the very creation of the world. This is how God operates. If you want to learn to talk to him this is the secret. Would you bow your heads for a moment. If you want to hear from God the beginning point is right here. Have you ever said to him God I will give you my life. I will start like Abraham and I'll live every day as best I know how doing exactly what you tell me to do. You're never going to hear from God until you do that. The Bible won't make any sense. Church won't make any sense. Bible study won't make any sense. But once you've made this step and you say Jesus Christ you're in charge of my life then God will begin to open to you the great mysteries secrets of the spiritual life and his kingdom. Today you can open that door to God. It's a matter of changing your own mind just saying God I've tried to do life the best I know how. That won't impress him. I'm sorry that I've ignored you and the big decisions in my life. But today I realize I need help that I can't give. So I'm saying to you Lord if you will tell me how to manage my life and the things I face I will read the Bible to find out. I'll come to church to find out. I'll talk to you and listen and I won't act until I know what you want me to do. That's what it means to give your life to Christ. And maybe you've given your life to Christ but you've come on one of those times whenever you're reading the Bible is not much there and you come to church is not much there and you go to Bible study and there's not much there. Like a little child you look back and say God have you told me something to do and I've refused to do it. He asked me to start doing something I'm not doing. He told me to stop doing something I'm doing and I've just said well I don't want to do that but what I want is I want to hear the next thing I want to hear. God's not going to talk to you till you go back and clear up what he's already told you to do. Now maybe that there's something in your life behavior he wants to change. He may want you to join the church. He may want you to be baptized. He may want you to profess your faith openly and clearly. See I can't know what that is but in this moment if you earnestly want to know all you have to do is say God tell me what it is and then you listen to the thoughts that come to your mind and there in those thoughts will be God's gusher for you. This time in the service music's playing I'm going to stop talking. I'm going to ask you to listen to God if you passionately want to hear what he has to say to you. If you're willing to do whatever he asks he will tell you. If he tells you there's something you need to do do it and then the lines of communication between you and God will be open. Lord Jesus I ask you speak to us. Each individual tell us exactly what you want from us. In your name I ask this.