He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables.” (Mark 4:11 NIV)
Jesus’ parables & the prophets
Jesus’ parables are very often tied to prophetic OT scripture. This is one of the most intriguing and deepening aspects of Jesus’ teaching. Jesus the King is carrying through the four main aspects of what He began through Isaiah and the other prophets. Read the prophets and you see four activities regarding the kingdom:
#1 – announcing God’s kingdom
#2 – exposing those who reject God
#3 – concealing God’s truth from them, and
#4 – revealing God’s will to those made holy as His remnant.
Now, look at those four activities. Those themes appear repeatedly in the prophets, and they appear in Jesus’ words – especially in His parables. Thus, one cannot escape the truth that Jesus was establishing a revolutionary new form of the Messiah’s kingdom. This form was promised and prophesied about, but not fully revealed until Messiah Himself came and instituted it.
Revolution
Speaking of revolutionary, many of the parables address the way Jesus’ new kingdom is different from the work that has come before.
And they said to Him, “The disciples of John often fast and offer prayers; the disciples of the Pharisees also do the same; but Yours eat and drink.” And Jesus said to them, “You cannot make the attendants of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? But the days will come; and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days.” And He was also telling them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment; otherwise he will both tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old.” (Luke 5:33-36 NASB)
The great Scottish preacher Alexander Bruce addressed the impact of this in his wonderful old book The Parabolic Teachings of Christ:
Jesus was defending His disciples for divergence from the religious customs, not of the Pharisees only, but of the Baptist’s followers. From this it follows, that the religious movement inaugurated by Jesus was a new thing, new wine, a new garment, in reference even to the religion of the Baptist-circle. Much is implied in this. If Christ had called his religion new as compared with Pharisaism it might have signified no more than that His religion was Judaism reformed, for Pharisaism was Judaism deformed. But John’s religion was itself a reformed Judaism; if therefore Christ’s was new in comparison with it, it must have been something more than a reform – a revolution, an absolutely new thing, having its roots in the Old Testament doubtless, but radically diverse in spirit, principle, and tendency, from the whole religious life of the age whether deformed or reformed.
As you and I study Jesus’ parables, I pray we embrace Jesus’ continuous revolution within. I pray Paul’s nifty summary: that we “walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4)