Lecture 10: Keys to the Main Point: Parables Finished, Figurative Language Begun

The lecture, section by section

1. Point and problem, hand in glove

   The method restated: read and reread the whole book until the flow is vivid, find the problem in the context, then penetrate the parable for its main point, which must answer that problem as the foot fits the slipper, because Jesus wastes no stories. Form your own conclusion from observation first, then check it against the best helps, ready to be corrected. And take heart: rightly approached, Scripture is simple, and the Bible is much clearer than the commentaries.

2. Key one and two: a question, a conclusion

   Sometimes a question frames the story: Peter's how often shall I forgive opens the unforgiving servant, and Jesus's closing so shall my heavenly Father do to you seals it, two questions sandwiching one parable about forgiveness from the heart. Sometimes a direct conclusion is appended: after the rich fool's my crops, my barns, my goods, my soul, the verdict lands, so is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. The conclusion is a key that turns in the parable's lock.

3. Key three: an answer to a request

   Lord, teach us to pray precedes the friend at midnight, so the parable addresses prayer. Its hinge is a Greek word appearing only here, rendered importunity in older versions: either the knocker's shameless persistence, or, as recent careful studies argue, the sleeper's concern for his blameless name in a small community where refusal would be all over town by morning. On either reading the argument runs from lesser to greater: if such a man rises to give as much as is needed, how much more the God whose character is wholly good.

4. Key four: a stated problem

   In Simon the Pharisee's house, guests reclined at low tables and the uninvited could stand watching, so the sinful woman could reach Jesus's feet with her tears, her hair, and the alabaster perfume. Simon's inner verdict, if this man were a prophet he would know what sort of woman this is, states the problem, and the parable of the two debtors answers it: five hundred denarii and fifty, both forgiven, and the one forgiven more loves more. Her lavish act was gratitude flowing from forgiveness received by faith, and the one who sees such fruit should rejoice, not judge.

5. Key five: a repeated pattern

   When a parable stands in a chain, the chain names its theme. The Olivet discourse strings a series of parables on one note, be prepared, so the ten virgins must picture readiness for the bridegroom's coming and the barred door the fate of the unready. Luke 15's chain, sheep, coin, and sons, answers the grumbling of 15:2 with lost, sought, found, and rejoicing, and exposes a second prodigal: the elder brother, lost inside the father's own house.

6. The birds in the mustard tree

   Some interpreters make the birds nesting in the grown mustard plant a picture of evil, an apostate world church, citing the seed-gobbling birds earlier in the chapter or the foul birds of Babylon. That is comparing apples with oranges. The true background is the Old Testament's own picture of a great tree sheltering birds: Ezekiel's planted sprig that becomes the Messiah's own empire, the great tree of Nebuchadnezzar's God-permitted greatness in Daniel 4, the birds of Psalm 104 singing in branches God provides. A large plant housing birds pictures magnitude and blessing; the rabbis even used birds for the Gentiles. Jesus is telling his ragtag band: you are part of something that will span the world.

7. The leaven, and how Scripture marks evil

   The same discipline clears the leaven: Leviticus itself commands leavened bread in good offerings, and Jesus introduces the figure with the kingdom of heaven is like, hardly a preface for wickedness. The leaven is the kingdom's inward, irreversible permeation to the whole. And notice the rule: when Matthew 13 intends evil, it says so plainly, the enemy sows the tares, the birds on the path are the devil by Jesus's own explanation. Where the text does not mark evil, the interpreter must not manufacture it.

8. The fatted calf is not the cross

   Some make kill the fatted calf a type of Christ's atonement. Three observations forbid it: the context is celebration, not sacrifice; the sequence is wrong, for the son has already been embraced and forgiven before the calf is mentioned; and the setting is a feast, meat for a party at which the whole community would learn to welcome the returner as the father had. The natural sense makes beautiful sense; the detail is drapery for the joy, not typology.

9. Buying the treasure without buying salvation

   Does the man who sells all and buys the field teach salvation by works? No: buy is transaction language, as Isaiah cries buy wine and milk without money and without price, and the Laodiceans are told to buy gold refined by fire. The parable pictures a sinner who so values the kingdom that he gladly relinquishes everything, the very estimate Paul makes in Philippians 3, counting all things rubbish to gain Christ. And the treasure-Israel, pearl-church scheme fails the context: Matthew 13's dividing line is never Israel against church but believer against unbeliever, wheat and tares, good fish and bad.

10. The four soils and the word become

    Only the fourth soil bears fruit, hundredfold, sixty, thirty, varying in measure but all fruitful; the first three bear none. The objection that the thorny-soil hearer becomes unfruitful, and so must once have been fruitful and saved, collapses against the parallel in Mark 4, which states point-blank that it bears no fruit. The word become is flexible; give the text a fighting chance among the possibilities before locking in one.

11. Figurative language: the devices and our own speech

    Beyond the parables lies the Bible's wider figurative language: simile, metaphor, allegory, ellipsis, paradox, among the many devices catalogued in the massive old handbook on figures of speech, useful even though its author's system elsewhere went badly astray, a reminder to judge books one by one. Our own speech runs on figures, whistle-blowers and star witnesses and exams that were a bear, so we should expect Scripture, in Isaiah, the Psalms, and Revelation, to abound in them.

12. Psalm 22: the worm, the dogs, and the next phrase

    The suffering one of Psalm 22 says I am a worm and no man: common sense notes that worms do not speak, and the figure means contempt, one despised as worthless. The psalm surrounds him with bulls, lions, and dogs, and the context itself decodes them: dogs have surrounded me, a band of evildoers, the next phrase defining the figure, and they divide my garments and cast lots, which no literal dog does. Poured out like water, heart like wax, dried like a potsherd: simile on simile, and the parallelism of Hebrew poetry, explained in the introductions of the great Psalms commentaries, keeps supplying the interpreting phrase.

13. Spirit of the statement, and anthropomorphism

    Cross-reference finishes the lion from the thicket in Jeremiah 4, which the book's own later chapters name as Babylon. Interpret the literal base, then identify the transfer, as the sower's seed becomes the word. Recognize when the spirit and not the strict letter carries the meaning: gouging out the eye is a stunning, graphic call to deal drastically with sin, for the heart would still sin with both eyes gone, as Scripture's teaching on the heart, the members, and the tongue confirms. And allow for anthropomorphisms: the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the earth describes God's perfect awareness in human terms, the awareness Psalm 139 celebrates, without literal eyes, though in the incarnate Son, God has them indeed.

1. The one forgiven more loves more. When has an honest reckoning of your own forgiveness enlarged your gratitude, and where has a Simon-like judgment of someone else's lavish devotion crept in instead?

2. The mustard seed told a discouraged handful they were part of something that would span the world. Where does our congregation most need that word right now, and what would acting on it look like?

3. Rosscup insists the Bible is clearer than the commentaries. How would your week of Bible reading change if you did your own observing first and used the helps second?