After you’ve taught or preached through the parables of Matthew, consider one more brief series of messages for your people.

Preach the parables of you.

We have all had defining stories happen in our families and our personal lives that would make great teaching parables. They are interesting stories in themselves but they also serve as trucks which we can load down with spiritual truths and deliver to our people.

Most congregations might enjoy this kind of a diversion in your preaching.

Eugene Peterson, in his book on the Psalms, “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction,” gives one of his own parables.

He begins, “An incident took place a few years ago that has acquired the force of a parable for me.”

Peterson was in a hospital room, recovering from minor surgery on his nose which had been broken years earlier in a basketball game. The pain was great and he was in no mood for fellowship.

The young man in the next bed wanted to chat. Peterson brushed him off–his name was Kelly–but overheard him telling his visitors that evening that “the fellow in the next bed is a prizefighter. He got his nose broken in a championship fight.” Kelly proceeded to embellish it beyond that.

Later, after the company had left, Peterson told him what had actually happened and they got acquainted. When Kelly found out he was a pastor, he wanted nothing more to do with him and turned away.

The next morning, Kelly shook Peterson awake. His tonsillectomy was about to take place and he was panicking. “I want you to pray for me!” He did, and they wheeled him to surgery.

After he returned from surgery, Kelly kept ringing for the nurse. “I hurt. I can’t stand it. I’m going to die.”

“Peterson!” he kept calling, “Pray for me. Can’t you see I’m dying? Pray for me.”

The staff held him down and quietened him and after a while all was well.

Peterson writes, “When the man was scared, he wanted me to pray for him, and when the man was crazy he wanted me to pray for him, but in between, during the hours of so-called normalcy, he didn’t want anything to do with a pastor. What Kelly betrayed ‘in extremis’ is all many people know of religion: a religion to help them with their fears but that is forgotten when the fears are taken care of….”

Here’s a second parable, one I found today and enjoyed.

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The last parable in Matthew’s gospel is familiarly known as “the parable of the talents,” from 25:14-30.

Someone says, “Wait a minute. What about the story that follows this parable, the judgement of the nations in which the Lord divides mankind into the sheep and the goats?” Answer: it’s not a parable. It’s the real thing.

A parable is an illustration thrown alongside a reality to make some significant point. But we must always be careful to discern when Jesus is not telling a story but dealing with the actual reality.

The basic points in this story–this parable of the talents–are these:

1. Before leaving for an indefinite period of time, the master of three slaves gives each a certain sum of money to invest.

2. The understanding is that each will give account on his return.

3. The amount each receives is based on that servant’s abilities as the master discerns.

4. Two servants put the money to work–we’re not told how–and doubled theirs.

5. One servant, the slave judged by the master to be worthy of only the smallest portion, buried his.

6. The master is delayed ‘a long time.’ (vs. 19)

7. On his return–sudden, no doubt, although this is not a point of the story–the master called the servants for an accounting of their stewardship.

8. Two had done well and thus received great rewards. In both cases, the reward was a greater responsibility.

9. The servant who buried his money was in trouble and knew it. He pleads that it was his fear of the master that prevented him from taking a risk. “Look, here it is–you have what is yours!” (vs. 25)

10. The master had no patience with such laziness. The man was banished.

11. The money entrusted to the lazy servant was awarded the one who had been most faithful. “To him who has, it shall be given.”

12. The corollary of that principle is also stated: “To him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” (vs. 29)

That’s the story.

How fitting that this should be the last of our Lord’s parables in Matthew.

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The Lord had a problem.

He had to convey to His disciples the inner operations of the Kingdom of God. He had to bring them up to a proper understanding of how God did things in the spiritual realm. And He had only three years to do it.

This must have been the equivalent of teaching quantum physics to a colony of ants. It was so far outside their day-to-day experiences that little of it made sense to the disciples.

They don’t call Jesus the Master Teacher for nothing.

He pulled it off.

How He did it should be called the greatest miracle He performed, although it’s not one you see included in anyone’s list of His feats.

He taught His followers up and down the Galilean hills, in the towns of Judea, and even while the stormy sea was battering them. He gave lessons in short bytes, it appears, and was constantly reiterating the insights. He demonstrated in Himself the principles He taught and was forever surprising the disciples. He did miracles of healing and provision, and turned these events into moments of teaching.

And among His teachings, He gave parables.

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like….” and “the Kingdom of God is like….”

I take the position that when He spoke of the kingdom of Heaven and of God, it was the same thing, that He used these terms interchangeably.

We have tiny examples all around us of the task Jesus was up against.

Missionaries return from their overseas assignment and stand before our churches to tell what things are like where they live. They entertain us with stories of how they learned the languages and mistakes they made. The customs of the citizens seem weird to us, and some are truly bizarre.

That is a tiny illustration of the assignment Jesus had in explaining Heaven’s operation to His followers.

A slightly better example is the foreign visitor who tries to tell you and me of his country. He is the native there and the newcomer here, and he knows his own people better than he does us. We listen intently because he speaks as an authority.

The best example, however, is one we cannot provide. The best illustration of what Jesus was up against would be a visitor from another planet, another world, coming to earth and telling us how things are where he is from.

That task would be formidable, the gap between the two immense, and the time period the alien might require to pull it off would involve years or more. He would have to learn our language, know our customs, and understand our people in order to make parallels from his own world

Jesus did it in three years. And lest anyone miss the point, as He died on the cross, He was heard to say, “It is finished.” He left no part of His assignment undone.

First, let us establish that Jesus Christ was an authority–no, THE authority–on Heaven. He Himself claimed as much.

Jesus said to Nicodemus, “No one has ascended into Heaven except the One who descended from Heaven–the Son of Man.” (John 3:13)

That is, He ought to know what He’s talking about. Jesus is a Native. And furthermore, He has no rival, no counterpart on earth who can add to what He’s saying. No one has been to Heaven except the One who came from there.

That raises a question: what about Elijah and Enoch and the saints of old? Didn’t they go to Heaven? The Bible seems to indicate they did (Genesis 5:24 and II Kings 2:11) and the Lord’s people have spoken on them through the ages as though they did.

Apparently, not to the Heaven Jesus spoke of, but perhaps some intermediate “lesser-Heaven,” if you will. Not yet the final resting place of the saints of God.

But we must leave that question to God and not waste time–for that’s what it would be–speculating on such matters for which God has not given answers.

When it comes to Heaven and the things of God, Jesus is the Authority.

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