Welcome to the Further Gospel Podcast, where we provide sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Kosti Hinn, and I want to welcome our listeners on Apple and Spotify. And those of you enjoying this on our YouTube video podcast format, if you are watching this on video, I am in a hat for the first time, I think, ever. I've done interviews maybe in hats, but uh and some Instagram lives with you guys. But this is a video podcast with a hat. If that bothers you, be free from legalism in Jesus' name. It's a podcast, not a pulpit. Uh, but I thought I'd have a little fun today, rock my green for the gospel hat. I know a number of you have uh been picking those up as well in the for the gospel store. A reminder we have black, we have green, we have other hats for women and different things on the website. If you ever get something from the for the gospel store, just remember all the proceeds from that go back into the ministry to help produce free resources. So thanks for your support. And also, pretty cool and pretty nice design and a great conversation starter. I'm gonna be at an airport later today, and it goes without fail that every time I rock this, somebody says, What does that represent? And I get to share the gospel with them. On today's episode, I'm kicking off a brand new series on the parables. It's gonna be about seven or eight weeks. I might stack two together, but this is gonna really help you in a couple of ways. One, you're gonna be strengthened and edified by studying the parables and understanding what Christ was talking about. But two, maybe you've never really known how to approach the parables and they seem intimidating or they get a little weird. Maybe you've been guilty of that. I know I have, where you just take things, make them symbolic. I think this means this, I think this means that. Oh, that, you know, that must be what Jesus was trying to say, and we kind of make a mess of the parables. They're incredible. They're theologically rich, they're highly practical, and if we get them right, then they are one of the best tools we have in our tool belt for the Christian life, theology, and all of the above. But I want to start off the right way. We're gonna get into our first parable in the next episode, but today, on this first one, I want to help lay a foundation for how to interpret parables. This will set the stage. And I want to address four key questions. I'm gonna answer number one, what is a parable? Number two, why did Jesus teach in parables? Number three, how should we interpret them? And then number four, what are some problematic approaches to parables? All of this is gonna strengthen our foundation so we can hit the ground running with our first one. All right, first question What is a parable? Well, the Greek word for parable gives us a clue because that word, parabole, means to set beside or to place alongside. In other words, it's a story or an illustration that is placed alongside a lesson or a truth in order to teach. So picture just bringing in an illustration to a sermon. And I love what Charles Spurgeon said about illustrations and sermons. He said they're windows. They just let in some light, they help illuminate, they help to accent things. And that's what parables really do. It means to place alongside. So just picture a story or an illustration next to a key truth. Second, why did Jesus teach in parables? This is one of the most overlooked questions in the Bible. Some people just assume he used stories to relate to people and to keep everything simple. Uh, there's maybe a partial truth there, and I'll explain that. But he actually gives us the reason outright. In Matthew 13, 10, the disciples came, they say to him, Why do you speak in parables? He answers and says, This, To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. But to them, he's talking about blind Pharisees, uh, the religious leaders, the Jews, those who are hard-hearted, he says, It has not been granted. For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance. But whoever does not have, even what he has, shall be taken away from him. Big truth there for the Jews that had their their ethnicity, their tie-ins to Abraham, and all of their pride about who they were and where they're from. Oh, yeah, they are Jews, but they were hard-hearted. He says, Therefore I speak to them in parables, because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, You will keep on hearing, but will not understand, you will keep on seeing but will not perceive, for the heart of this people has become dull, with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they would see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and return, and I would heal them. Then Jesus says, But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears because they hear, for truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it. So in the text I just read to you, we actually have multiple reasons for why Jesus taught in parables. The number one reason, or one, is to hide the truth. The number two reason, or the other reason, was to reveal the truth. So first to hide it, and two, to reveal it. Does that seem contradictory? It's not. There were blind, hard-hearted religious Pharisees. They would be further frustrated and blinded by parables. They were so wise in their own eyes, high and mighty and haughty, that they couldn't see simple truth. Meanwhile, the humble, the lowly, the teachable, and the spiritually hungry, they would see the truth. And maybe Matthew 11, 25 and 26 summarizes this best when Jesus says, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and you've revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in your sight. What a truth that is. And maybe one that you've never been taught, so it's very important to know. The parables were to hide the truth and they were to reveal the truth. It depended which individual or which audience somebody was a part of. Third, how should we interpret the parables? As a general rule of thumb, I really like R.C. Sproul's four guiding principles for interpreting the parables. Here they are. Number one, don't treat parables like allegory. An allegory is most often completely filled with symbolic meaning, sprawl says. Every detail means something that can be traced to the overriding principle that is being illuminated. Parables usually have one basic central meaning. Trying to oversymbolize them, he says, can have the effect of tearing them apart. A person doesn't understand the beauty of a flower by disassembling it. Oh, that's so good. I love that. Like a blossom, a parable is best understood by seeing it in its simple and profound entirety. This is just gold from sprawl. Number two, he says the rule of three. Like all good storytelling, parables usually follow the rule of three. Do you remember the stories you heard as a child, like the three little pigs, the three bears? Both of these stories are filled with more threes. You got three wolves, three beds, three bowls of porridge, all of that. Jesus did this often when he used parables. And uh, is it any wonder then that many parables deliver three important truths? Or most sermons, preachers, we do this, rest on what? Let me give you three points. Three points. Where did that come from? It came from parable telling. Number three, the rule of two. So there's another key interpretive rule here. Parable characters often follow the rule of two. They were usually two people, and they experienced tension between righteousness and sin, good and evil, right and wrong. And when you look for these two elements, you're gonna find an important part of the development of a parable that helps keep things really simple. And finally, number four, code words and phrases, he says. Jesus' parables use certain phrases and code words that communicated in subtly powerful ways to his audience. For instance, he would say, How much more? And that's used to build a bridge from temporal things to spiritual reality. So be careful when you hear, you know, sprawl say code words and phrases. You're like, I thought you said this was gonna be simple, Costi. I thought it's supposed to bring, you know, lofty truth to bear and it's just simple. It doesn't mean code like you've got to have some secret code and it gets all weird, spiritualized, and allegorized. No, that would contradict his other points. It's simple. You got to look for these special phrases. How much more? What is that? Eternal versus temporal. That makes parables really simple because now we see God is bringing a comparison. Uh another one, he who has ears to hear. This is a code word or a phrase that calls people to critically important issues of spiritual life and death. There's another one. He says, There is verily, verily, I say to you, which means Jesus is speaking with intensity. So when you look at parables or he starts a parable with verily, verily, or truly, truly I say to you, that means Jesus is being earnest and he's being intense. So you want to listen and read and even approach that parable, seeing the intensity. It's not like a light thing he's teaching. Heaven and hell, life and death, truth and deception, righteousness and sin all being laid before us. And so you want to look for those phrases and understand where they're leading you. Now, for our last question, this one's important. What are some problematic approaches to parables? This is key. If the Lord used parables a lot in his ministry, and he did, we don't want to miss this. We don't want to kind of butcher what he has used so intentionally. We want to hear his word, we want to heed the word. Why? Because we love him. I don't know about you, but I want to hear his voice through the truth. And so avoid these. Here are some dangers. Number one, using parables as an excuse to merely storytell in our preaching or accept storytellers as genuine preachers. Now, it's great. I love stories. My son, right now, has started a trilogy. Um, he started with The Hobbit, a dear friend of ours got him uh the set, and he is reading voraciously. He is blasted through the Chronicles of Narnia, the reading set. I mean, I love stories, my kids love stories, we talk in stories. The Bible has a beautiful storyline, but be so careful when we approach preaching or we approach the church and the pulpit. And let's say you say, Well, I'm not a pastor. How does this apply to me, Costi? I would say where you go to church and what you're sitting under, make sure you're not sitting under some TED talk storyteller. And I'm not trying to be cheeky or rude or attack everyone as though the only people that are right are the expositors spending, you know, two years on four words in one verse. Don't hear what I'm not saying. But listen, there's a lot of storytellers out there, and it's real popular at seeker-driven churches. And when you say, hey, take me deeper, I want more truth, you know, give me the word. Don't just tell me stories. They'll often say, hey, Jesus spoke in parables, and that's why I just storytell. He was a storyteller, and they basically take one aspect and build an entire philosophy of preaching on it. That is a myopic narrative because it leaves out all the other instances where Jesus said direct things and where the New Testament leaders did the same, where Jesus says things like, repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, like in Matthew 4, or uh like when he was very explicit about the nature of how we should live in the Sermon on the Mount. I'm preaching through the Gospel of Matthew at our church, and we're not far off. We just got through chapter four, we're coming up to chapter five. It is a sermon. This discourse is remarkable. I'm not storytelling, I'm preaching. What about the cost of discipleship in Matthew 10? What about Luke 14? He wasn't storytelling, he was plain as day when he said, if you don't love me the most and take up your cross and follow me and lay down your own life, you cannot be my disciple. That wasn't storytelling, that was dead serious truth. So let's make sure that we don't take one aspect of Jesus' teaching ministry and turn it into our excuse for being nothing but storytellers. When Paul says to Timothy in uh 2 Timothy 4, the instructions for ministry doesn't say, hey, Timothy, tell stories. He says what? Preach the word. So parables are poorly used when they are an excuse for some elaborate storytelling ministry only as a preacher. And look, you're talking to a guy or listening to a guy who loves a good illustration, but we all know an illustration is not the sermon and it's not the point of preaching. Number two, using parables to pull punches on the truth. This one kind of plays off the last one, but it expands. And this approach was recently kind of making news when uh Stephen Furtick and Elevation said they weren't going to use any Christian buzzwords in their marketing. So, like blood of Jesus and resurrection, all of that wasn't on any of their Easter marketing because they didn't want to offend churchgoers. And I'm not really even worried much about that. That's just Furtick being Furtick. And if you haven't got a good understanding of his ministry and some of the challenges there, then you should do more research. It's public, and so we should be publicly aware. But one defender of the approach, uh a kind of social media uh marketer consultant who puts himself out there as this expert who can help your church navigate the biggest shift in communication in the last 500 years, I appreciate some of the stuff that people like him do. And look at our ministry, we're using media, we approach things a lot of the same ways, but here's the problem. When marketers and church consultants start saying things like, hey, parables are a great example of why this is a good approach for churches to take. And in a paraphrase, people basically say, Jesus spoke in parables to keep things simple and to present the truth in a veiled way. And so we shouldn't use a lot of those buzzwords. We should kind of do it too, like he did. Listen, friends, now that you're this far into this episode, you know that's not the point of Jesus using parables. He wasn't veiling the truth like a church marketer doesn't say blood of Jesus, resurrection, repent, wrath, sin. He wasn't pulling punches by using parables. He wasn't being seeker friendly in a way that dumbed down the language or pulled punches on the truth. He was actually blinding people. So we really need to get an understanding of what the parables were about and why they are significant, not use them to pull punches. Here's another one: making everything mean something symbolic. This is a problematic approach to the parables because we may take a parable, which usually is not a literal factual event, but a story, and we turn every part of it into a symbol and we try to make it mean something more than it does. And believe me, I sometimes you might hear these things and go, man, that'll preach. I remember time and time again when sitting under shallow or just flat out false teaching, I'd hear parables sliced up and misapplied. And I didn't know it, but man, those parables, when they get symbolically manipulated and applied to all sorts of different things, do they preach or what? Now it's bad preaching and it's really horrendous hermeneutics, but they sound so profound that you think you've encountered something new. And don't we love new? In immaturity or in ignorance or in a consumeristic way, everybody loves being on the cutting edge. I love when something is limited edition or it's on discount. Some of you uh have heard me uh tell the joke before. If you haven't, you know, I always say it this way these coupons or discounts or limited time offers that you know you're gonna go broke saving money. You're gonna be like, man, I gotta do this. And so it's discounted. Well, who says you even have the money for that? But it's 20% off, or there's only five available. We love that. Well, when a preacher comes and says, Now, some of y'all, you never heard this before, or I got a revelation that you've never been told, or God wants me to tell you, and we start going, whoa, or we hear a parable from a new angle or some truth in a new way. I want to remind you theologically that faithful preaching, while it should never be boring, and while we'll learn many new things because we're growing and being sanctified, theologically speaking, if it's new, it probably isn't true. So if you come to a text and go, I found something that no commentator has ever, ever said or discovered. You're not on the path of wisdom, you might be on a different path. When it comes to theology, that statement could not be more helpful when it comes to the parables, interpretation. If it's new, it isn't true. So to recap, this opening episode in the parable series, there's stories that come alongside a truth to help illustrate it. Jesus used them to both hide the truth and reveal the truth. They typically have one meaning. They provide us with clear truths relating to the gospel, God's character, and eternity. And lastly, don't oversymbolize them and don't overemphasize Jesus storytelling in simple ways through parables to justify you pulling punches on the truth or sitting under a preacher who's really just a storyteller, making you laugh, sending you out, and you're not growing strong in sound doctrine. Jesus actually did the opposite. And in our first parable next time, we're gonna look at the rich fool. So, number one, how's that for pulling punches? And number two, how's that for not using bombastic language that might offend someone? The rich fool. I love Christ for so many reasons. One being he is clear as day, isn't he? He's faithful like that, he's good like that, he's loving like that, and he tells you and I like it is. So we'll dig into the rich fool as our first one. I absolutely cannot wait. I hope this has been a good foundational approach for you. If you're looking for a book to go deeper, I'd recommend the book Parables by John MacArthur. It's a great overview of Parables. He's such a fantastic and faithful Bible teacher. It'll sharpen you and encourage you. Maybe grab that book as an accompaniment as we go through the next several weeks. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching and supporting. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel and take advantage of all of our free video teachings here. And to check out our team, partner with our ministry by becoming a monthly gospel patron, or pick up one of these hats or something like it. Go to for thegospel.org. I'll be back next Monday with another episode. Keep on living for the gospel.