Parables of Jesus

These days Sunday worship puts me on what I call the wrong side of the altar.  I would much prefer a place behind a pulpit, but this is a season for sitting in the pew.  Last Sunday's worship featured a preacher who used one of the parables of Jesus for his text.  It set me to thinking about the parables.  I realized I had not focused on them much lately.  So, my take away from the Sunday sermon is to spend a little more time in the upcoming days with the  parables of Jesus.

 

One of the things which we preachers are tempted to do is to turn the parables into allegories.  What this means is that  in an allegory different people and events might have some symbolic meaning all their own, but parables are different.  It is an error to take a parable like the parable of the lost coin and give some spiritual significance to the house in which the coin was lost, or to speak of reason it was a woman who lost the coin, or to make a point of the lamp she burned in her search.   The parable has one point to be preached and it is found in the last verse, "Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God  over one sinner who repents."  (Luke 15:10)

 

A parable has a single truth.  It is not to be handled as if it every part of the parable has a special meaning all its own.  Jesus loved to use parables in teaching spiritual truth.  One of the parables which defies this definition actually seems more like an allegory that is mislabeled and that is the parable of the sower.  But, who am I to say?  I am only a reader of the Word.  The Holy Spirit is the author and the inspiration of the Word.  It is very likely that He has insight into what Jesus was seeking to communicate that day that I do not have.  Still, I find myself wondering, but then, causing wondering is one of the points of those parables of Jesus.