Lessons of Messiah (Level 2 | 39)

You're on a journey through the Bible to experience the epic story of God and to learn your

part to play in the unfolding drama.

Prepare for your role as you learn your history, your enemy, and your king.

Welcome to the Bible Brief.

Join us today as we dive into the parables of Jesus, mysterious sayings that help us

diagnose our spiritual condition if we're willing to listen.

Before listening to the Bible Brief, the Messiah has come, and his life so far has been

defying expectations.

Many of the Jews expected the Messiah to be a conquering king who would come immediately

defeat the Romans and establish the new everlasting kingdom of Israel.

But for now, Jesus is doing something different.

He's simply walking around Judea, spreading the message of a kingdom that's coming, but

isn't here yet.

He's a king, sharing about what it takes to enter the kingdom of God, who will be part

of the kingdom, and how the kingdom will be different than anything that has come before.

Jesus is a different sort of king, and we're going to discover this even more.

He's a king who takes the lolliest position in the kingdom, before he's established

on the throne.

His trajectory is toward suffering, before it's toward David's throne.

Messiah is certainly defying expectations.

Now Jesus often teaches in the form of short narrative stories, riddle-like stories that

are called parables, stories that illustrate a point, but don't always explain the point

being illustrated.

They forced a listener to think and ponder over what is said in order to discern the proper

meaning.

And as Jesus continues traveling around Judea, he shares parables.

Few as famous as what's often called, the parable of the so word.

Jesus says it like this.

A farmer went out to sow his seed, and as he was sowing, some fell along the path where

it was trampled, and the birds of the air devoured it.

Some fell on rocky ground, and when it came up, the seedlings withered because they had

no moisture.

Other seed fell among the thorns, which grew up with it and choked the seedlings.

Still other seed fell on good soil, where it sprang up and produced a crop, a hundred

fold.

As the crowds listened to Jesus, they began to try to put it all together in their minds.

There's a sower who's sowing the same seed everywhere, but apparently the seed comes

to rest on different soils.

Those soils in turn somehow determine the fruitfulness of the grain crop.

Surely they said to themselves, hmm, who is the sower?

What is the seed, and what is it with these different types of soil?

Thankfully, the disciples asked Jesus for an explanation here, and we readers get to

benefit from his explanation to them.

He says, this is the meaning of the parable.

The seed is the word of God.

The seeds along the path are those who hear, but the devil comes and takes away the word

from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved.

The seeds on rocky ground are those who hear the word and receive it with joy, but they

have no root.

They believe for a season, but in time of testing, they fall away.

The seeds that fell among the thorns are those who hear, but as they go on their way,

they are choked out by the worries, riches, and pleasures of this life, and their fruit

does not mature.

But the seeds on good soil are those with a noble and good heart who hear the word, cling

to it, and by persevering produce a crop.

If the crowd had been able to listen to this explanation to the disciples, they would have

discovered that many of their questions were answered.

The sower sows the seed, which is the word of God elsewhere called the word of the kingdom,

and the different soils represent different reactions to the word of God.

There are those who hear, but do not believe because of the activity of Satan, those who

receive the word, but fall away when tested, those who hear, but don't allow the seed

to mature in themselves because of the cares of the world, and finally those who hear

the word and hold fast to it so that it becomes very fruitful.

Now this is all perhaps interesting, until a listener begins to apply the message of

the parable.

The real application of the parable is this, what type of soil are you?

Are you the passive listener who doesn't believe?

Are you excited about the Bible and about God, but will fall away when life becomes difficult?

Is your fruitfulness stifled because you're carrying more about this world than obedience

to the word of God?

Or are you the fruitful soil who patiently instead fastly sticks with Jesus despite the

cost?

The purpose of the parable is a question, what type of soil are you?

Now, this isn't the only parable that Jesus speaks to the people about the kingdom of God,

and it isn't the only one that he tells using the language of crops and farming.

Jesus put before them another parable.

The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while everyone

was asleep, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and slipped away.

When the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the weeds also appeared.

The owner's servants came to him and said, Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field?

Where then did the weeds come from?

An enemy did this, he replied.

So the servants asked him, Do you want us to go and pull them up?

No, he said, If you pull up the weeds now, you might uproot the wheat with them.

Let both grow together until the harvest.

At that time, I will tell the harvesters.

First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned.

Then gather the wheat into my barn.

Now in this parable, Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a farmer who sowed good seed

in his field.

But then an enemy comes and sows weeds in the same field, yet the farmer commands his

servants to let the weeds and the wheat grow together until the time of harvest.

It will be at the harvest time, where the crops are cut and separated.

The wheat into the farmer's barn and the weeds to be burned.

Questions surely swirled in the minds of Jesus' audience, but again the disciples help

us by asking Jesus privately to explain the meaning.

Jesus says this,

The one who sowed the good seed is the son of man.

The field is the world, and the good seed represents the sons of the kingdom.

The weeds are the sons of the evil one and the enemy who sows them as the devil.

The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.

As the weeds are collected and burned in the fire, so will it be at the end of the age.

The son of man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom every

cause of sin and all who practice lawlessness, and they will throw them into the fiery furnace

where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.

Now in this parable, the good seed are the sons of the kingdom, citizens who will be in

the kingdom of God, and these good seed are intermixed with the sons of Satan who practice

evil until the harvest, which is at the end of the age.

The disciples may have thought among themselves,

Well, okay Jesus, but what does this mean for us?

And since we are not at the end of the age yet, you and I may have the same question.

But perhaps we can consider this.

The knowledge of the world as it is can help us navigate the world for what it is, instead

of what we wish it were.

Through this parable, we can understand that there is a mix of people around us in the

world.

There are sons of the kingdom, and there are sons of Satan, all mixed together in the

field of the world.

In the Son of Man, a common way for Jesus to reference himself, he wants it to be this

way for now.

Since there are weeds mixed with the wheat, he wants them all to grow together until the

harvest.

A good follow-up question might be, why does Jesus want it to be this way?

Why is there this growing season with all the mixed crops?

Well perhaps we'll get our answer to this as Jesus continues his ministry.

What we ought to consider, however, with the two parables explored so far is that there's

an enemy active in the world seeking to undermine what Jesus is building.

The enemy wants to deceive and destroy whether through high-handed sin or the sneaking self-righteousness

of many listening to Jesus.

As for these self-righteous, Jesus had another parable.

To some who trusted in their own righteousness and viewed others with contempt, Jesus also

told this parable.

Two men went up to the temple to pray.

One was a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, God, I thank you that I am not like the other

men.

Swindlers, evil doers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week and I pay tithes of all that I acquire.

But the tax collector stood at a distance, unwilling to even lift up his eyes to heaven

instead he beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I tell you, this man rather than the Pharisee went home justified.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

Jesus here makes an illustration that's easier to see than the other parables because

he's using pictures of the people of the day, and apparently righteous Pharisee and

a hated tax collector.

But what Jesus does with these two figures is flip the script.

We see the Pharisee bragging about his own supposed righteous deeds and his moral purity.

While we see the tax collector praying with an ashamed posture, simply asking God

for mercy, the Pharisee thinks he's good while the tax collector knows that he's not.

The Pharisee doesn't ask for God's mercy because he thinks he doesn't need it.

While the tax collector depends upon God's mercy because it's everything he needs.

And who does Jesus say is exalted and justified by God?

The tax collector who needed God's mercy and asked for it.

The one so hated by the society of the day was accepted by God because he came humbly understanding

his need of mercy.

The pride and self-righteousness of the Pharisee made him miss the mercy that he needed just

as much as the tax collector.

You can imagine Jesus' listeners, those who again trusted in themselves that they were

righteous and treated others with contempt.

You can imagine them seething.

Who was Jesus to say that God would accept a tax collector over them?

Who indeed?

Now besides parables, Jesus also often answered questions of people who came up to him.

And one day a young ruler comes up to him with perhaps the most important question that

one could ask.

A certain ruler asked him, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

Why do you call me good, Jesus replied?

No one is good except God alone.

Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor

your father and your mother.

All these I have kept from my youth, he said.

On hearing this, Jesus told him, you still lack one thing.

Sell everything you own and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

Then come, follow me.

But when the ruler heard this, he became very sad because he was extremely wealthy.

Seeing the man's sadness, Jesus said, how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom

of heaven, indeed it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for

a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

This is a pretty straightforward teaching of Jesus.

Someone can externally appear to follow the law, but when pushed to a breaking point,

they break, and Jesus knowing the hearts of the people knew right where to push.

For this man, it was his wealth.

He couldn't part with it, so he eventually parted from Jesus.

His love of money eclipsed his love for God and his willingness to obey Messiah.

The disciples, however, soon ask a related question, and Jesus answers in a way that extends

hope even to those like this rich young ruler.

The disciples understand that everyone is rich in some way.

Everyone has things that they love in this world and about this world.

Everyone has possessions or relationships that they don't want to part from, and it's

with this in mind that they ask Jesus, who then can be saved?

But Jesus said, what is impossible with man is possible with God.

This continues to illustrate the standard that he emphasized in the sermon on the mount,

a heightening of the law to the perfection point.

In his parables, he begins to flesh out the world of the righteous and the unrighteous.

The righteous wheat that are those like the tax collector who humbly asked God for mercy,

and the unrighteous weeds who make a standard for themselves, a standard far below God's

standard.

Jesus shows that the true standard is perfection, and that perfection can only be given

not earned.

What humans need is humility enough to ask for the mercy of God.

In all these parables, Jesus is illustrating a point made clearer as we move through

the Bible story.

Later in the Bible, it's said like this, all have sinned and fall short of the glory

of God, and are justified freely by his grace.

The question that Jesus leaves with perhaps every teaching and every parable is this, who

are you?

What kind of soil are you?

Are you a son of the kingdom or a son of Satan?

Are you a self-righteous Pharisee or a humble tax collector?

The parables help us with diagnosis, and once we're honestly diagnosed, we can go to

the great physician, the only one that can make us stand perfect before God.

Join us next time as we see Jesus on the road to Jerusalem.

He's given a king's welcome, followed by a murderer's sentence.

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