What are parables, and why did Jesus use them so often?

<p>What are parables, and why did Jesus use them so often?</p>

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Hope Channel

InVerse 3rd Quarter 2024: Stories that Transform

Sikhu Daco

Justin Kim

Israel Ramos

Joe Reeves

01 Rooted in Faith

02 Lost but Found

03 Discovering the Treasure

04 Caught in the Crossfire

05 Persistent in Prayer

06 Loving our Neighbor

07 The Wedding Garment

08 Bearing Fruit

09 Giving to God

10 Called to Serve

11 Living for Eternity

12 Filled with the Spirit

13 Building on the Rock

Coming to you from Silver Spring, Maryland, welcome to Inverse, a Bible-based conversation on life principles, contemporary issues, and thought-provoking perspectives.

Now here's your host, Justin Kim, with Inverse.

Hey everyone, my name is Justin and welcome to Inverse.

We are embarking on a new Bible study topic today.

We're so happy that you have decided to join us here in the studio.

And we have Siku here on my left, your right, and we got Israel to my right, your left.

But we have a new team member with us today, and I want to introduce Joe Reeves.

Hey, Do we call you Joe or do we call you Joseph?

Does your wife call you Joseph when she's angry?

1 of my parents called me Joseph, 1 of them called me Joe.

Well, we're so glad that you decided to join us.

If you want to follow along with us, we're in a new Bible study topic.

This is the episode to do it, in joining us for the next 13 weeks in studying the parables of Jesus.

Go to inversebible.org slash inverse and you can download the Bible study guide there.

You can look for, what's the actual topic on?

It's called Stories That Transform, Stories That Transform, and these are Jesus' stories that transform.

We'll have a word of prayer, Sikhu if you can lead us out, and we'll talk a little bit about what these stories do.

Loving Father, we're thankful that we can come to your word again, And the same way that you've blessed us in the past, when we read scripture, we pray that you'd bless us now.

We ask for the gift of the Holy Spirit to guide our understanding as we begin this journey of looking at some of the stories that you told when you're on this earth.

May we glean the blessing that you intended for us to when you share these stories.

I want to ask you guys, like, we're going to get into, we're going to get into Mark, Mark chapter 4 and get into the text.

But yeah, let's look at stories a little bit.

You all should be familiar what the parables are.

Maybe there's someone out there who's not familiar what the parable is.

What is a parable and why does Jesus use that?

Parables are just, I think they're stories, true stories, or I don't want to say false stories, but they're not always events that actually happen, but they're means by which Jesus illustrated deep truths that would be said in our minds.

And so he often used illustration so that every time we looked at those illustrations that happened in common everyday walks of life, it would spark the truth that he was seeking to teach.

How are these stories different from like, you know, Aesop stories?

You guys know Aesop, the rabbit and the tortoise or the fox and the hare or the giraffe and the elephant and the, you know, that's not a real story.

How are Jesus' stories from all the other fairy tale stories, not all the other, but like the fairy tale stories of Europe or, you know, the stereotypical African, you know, the lion meets the, you know, whatever, or the Asian, you know, all these cultural stories.

Why are Jesus' stories different from the rest of those?

Well, Jesus, with many of his stories, begin with the kingdom of heaven is like.

So his stories were to reveal the kingdom of heaven.

And many of these other stories, I don't know, there's a large entertainment factor, there's cultural factors too, But every single story, we could call it metaphor, they use that word sometimes in literature, metaphor illustration was to reveal the kingdom of heaven.

So all these other stories, that's awesome.

They reveal kind of how we should interact with each other.

You know Aesop's fables, they're great illustrations for like, hey, how do 2 people, how they should get along or social dynamics or where a country came from, you know.

I know the ancient Koreans believe that we came from some mountain from because of a bear and some wart or something.

Anyway, so Jesus' parables don't talk necessarily about Earth, but about Heaven, and because of Heaven, how we should interact here on Earth.

Or at least connecting the 2, because he was wanting to bring the kingdom of Heaven to Earth.

Any other insights you guys may have about Jesus's parables?

Yeah, what I mentioned before, I think it's worth illustrating again or mentioning again.

That's the fact that Jesus was able to take things that happen in common walks of life all the time.

And the whole purpose of that, of bringing the kingdom of God here on earth in our personal lives was so that we would be able to draw object lessons from common things in life.

So he often talked about things that happened with agriculture because it was an agricultural society, or things that had to do with keeping sheep because a lot of people were shepherds.

And all of these different things were designed for God's people, whoever wanted to live a righteous life, for them to be able to bring, kind of set their affections on things above rather than just on the things of the earth.

And that's what, for me personally, parables have done.

Often as I'm living life on a regular basis, you see these elements of these parables taking place in my everyday life and it reminds me of, oh, this is what Jesus was referring to.

Another aspect that parables had when Jesus used them was because it was not...

It was teaching a lesson but you need to decipher the lesson, right?

Yeah, they're not always straightforward and there's kind of, there's an interpretive journey that you have to go through to understand what the parallel is talking about.

And so it actually was a medium for him to say things, sometimes things that were difficult, to say things that would challenge people in very serious ways, to say it without saying it.

And then if you're willing to understand, you could understand, but then if you were close to it, you maybe wouldn't understand.

So it's kind of a way to communicate, it was a way for him to communicate, sometimes difficult truths to people who maybe were not willing to hear them at times.

It's 1 way to speak straight to someone without speaking straight to them.

Series

InVerse 3rd Quarter 2024: Stories that Transform

01 Rooted in Faith

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2020: How to Know God’s Will for Your Life

06-Lifestyle: Legalism or Liberalism

27m

InVerse, 1st Quarter 2019: Revelation

03-Jesus’ Messages to the Seven Churches

27m

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2022: James

03 The Importance of the Outward Man

27m

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2023: Three Cosmic Messages

08 The Sabbath and the End

29m

InVerse 3rd Quarter 2024: Stories that Transform

07 The Wedding Garment

29m

InVerse, 3rd Quarter 2022: The Sabbath

01 Beginnings and Endings

27m

InVerse, 4th Quarter 2019: Nehemiah: Principles of Biblical Leadership

10-Successors and Ancestors

28m

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2021: The Promise, God's Everlasting Covenant

07 Old Vs. New

27m

InVerse, 1st Quarter 2023: God First

09 The Phoenician Widow: The Trusting Giver

28m

InVerse 1st Quarter 2024: Jesus & Liberty

11 The Final Tyranny

28m

InVerse 4th Quarter 2024: The Gospel of John

09 Preparing the Disciples

29m

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2021: The Promise, God's Everlasting Covenant

06 The Two Covenants

27m

Sound Doctrine