Nicholson, J B: Parables Of Christ-03 ~ Word Alive SE

I've given you a sheet, uh, the second sheet in the series called nineteen Parables of the Coming King. If you're looking for a complete list of all the parables, uh, it's a little hard to draw because you have to decide how small can a parable get before it shrinks into a metaphor or a simile. Uh, so sometimes, uh, we say, well, that's, that's not, it's metaphorical language. It's, uh, it's parabolic language, and yet sometimes, uh, we'll see just a phrase here or an idea there, and we say, well, uh, we, we probably shouldn't include that as a parable. But we did make a list in Uplook Magazine of the, uh, parables of the Lord Jesus, uh, in a, an article, an issue, I think, a year ago. If you'd like a copy of that, you could probably get it off the web, off the, uh, Uplook website, and if not, uh, we could probably get a copy sent to you. But this is a, a list of the nineteen parables that have to do, uh, with the coming again of the king. And I leave that to you. I'm not going to read it to you, but, uh, one of the extremely important themes in the parables is the self-portrait of the storyteller himself. Some of you are familiar with those paintings from the brush of Norman Rockwell, where he painted himself into the painting. I remember one where they have, uh, two boxers, and he painted the scene of the bo- the boxers, and there's one man kind of turned around looking back at the crowd, looking at, looking at you, pulling you into the picture, and it's actually a painting of Norman Rockwell. And there are several others. I think the- there's one where a young couple's coming to get a marriage certificate, and and Rockwell's standing there with hat in hand, uh, in the in the waiting room. He's not the first. There are many famous artists who have done the same thing. I was trying to think of some, but I think Rembrandt's, uh, Surrender of Breda, he he painted himself into that one. So it's an interesting thing when we find the Lord Jesus in telling these stories that he paints himself into the story. And so if you went through the parables simply looking for the way the Lord Jesus describes himself, it would be a worthwhile study, wouldn't it? And what's interesting about the portrait is this, that his hearers, they could go and see the stable where he was born, but in his parables, he told them of the palace from which he came. He was dressed in homespun and worked as a carpenter, but in his parables, he told them that he actually was a wealthy merchant man, that he was the son of a king. And so the parables give us a portrait of the Lord Jesus in the Gospels that is in quite stark relief over against what he appeared to be as he went about as a mendicant preacher, sleeping on the hillsides and, uh, living a life of penury. I- it's a good thing for us to pay close attention to the way he describes himself as he tells these parables. The Lord Jesus not only painted himself in, but he also painted in his view of life and what really mattered. He tells us through the parables those things that are the most important things to... So when we, when we look at his life and we say that's the life to live, in the parables he tells us how to live a life like that. He tells, for example, the story of the, of the man who builds his house on the rock and the man who builds his house on the sand, and sometimes we sort of approximate the truth and say, well, this is a picture of those who know the Lord and those who don't know the Lord, or those who trust the Lord and those who don't trust him. But he applies that story and says that the one who builds his house on the, the rock is the person who hears the word of God and obeys it. And the person who builds his life on the sand is the person who also knows God's word, but just doesn't obey it. And so the Lord Jesus is laying down the breathtaking claim that the difference between a success and a failure is simply this, whether you take him seriously or not. That's quite a claim, isn't it? As we read through the parables, another, another very important idea is the pulling back of the veil between time and eternity, or between the present and the future. And the Lord Jesus authoritatively tells us what it's like in hell, what it's like in heaven, what it will be like at the judgment, how it will be at the end. And many of these parables take us to that point, don't they? They talk about, uh, what it will be like for faithful and unfaithful stewards, what it will be like for those who sow to the wind, those who, those who sow to the flesh, those who sow to the spirit, uh, what it will be like for the wheat and the tares, for the sheep and the goats, the, the, the bringing in of the dragnet and the sorting out of the fish. He, he takes us to the climax of history, and he explains to us the terms. Now, this is a very, very important idea because the one who is telling us the story is the judge. You don't have to guess. People say, well, you know, I think people go to hell because they've never heard about Jesus. Well, the Lord Jesus says to Nicodemus, this is why people are condemned. Our ears ought to prick up. We ought to say, well, well, it's just another opinion. You have your opinion, he has his. You know, wait a minute, this is the judge speaking, the one into whose hands all judgment has been delivered. This is why people perish, he says, because light has come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light. That's why. Because they believe not. They choose, they make a conscious choice to reject the light that has been revealed to them. So when the Lord Jesus talks about how it will be at the end, he describes both the judgment seat of Christ and the great white throne, doesn't he? And the sheep and goats judgment. He has them all here in these parables. He lays them out for us, and we can take a look at them and see what he thinks, the way to live in the present and how it's going to be in the future. Another, another great theme in the parables that you ought to look for is the theme of joy. The Lord Jesus is very often, uh, considered to be the man of sorrows, and you know, that title is used of him, but he was no crepe hanger. He went to their parties, you know. He rejoiced with them. He rejoiced with those who do rejoice, as well as weeping with those who weep. And you'll find the, the theme of joy, I'll mention only a few of them, but they're a little surprising where the word joy shows up. For example, the sheep has wandered off into the, into the wilds, and the shepherd leaves safety and, and uh, maybe his supper, and he goes off into the wilds, and he finds the sheep that has wandered away, and he doesn't spank the sheep. He puts it on his shoulders, and he comes home rejoicing. And he doesn't just rejoice himself, does he? This joy is so great, he, he can't contain it. And he calls in all his neighbors, and he says, come rejoice with me. And then the Lord Jesus applies it and says that when a sinner repents, comes home to the Father, all heaven rejoices. But the joy spills over to planet Earth, and we rejoice with heaven too, over one sinner that repents. And three times over, he speaks of the joy of the Father. Unless we take it to be a given, well, of course, that's obvious. Everybody would rejoice, wouldn't they, if the lost was found? Well, we come to the story of the other brother, don't we? And he didn't rejoice. He was angry and would not go in. Is that any way to treat a prodigal? Give him the best place at the table, give him the fatted calf, give him the, the ring and the shoes and the garment? That's no way to treat. You see, he didn't understand the ways of God. There are many people who become upset with this when, when word came out that, uh, this mass murderer, um, w- had professed to be saved. Why, there were people who got really angry. The natural man does not like mercy. Let him stew in his own juice. He made his bed, let him sleep in it. That's the attitude of the unbeliever. They don't understand the ways of God. They don't appreciate mercy for others. And so the Lord Jesus tells the story of the other brother, which of course is the point of the story. It's not the story of the prodigal. The point of the story is the other brother. And this brings before us one of the really thrilling ways to use parables. When you're speaking with unbelievers, you're speaking to a hostile environment. You're behind enemy lines, and you're speaking to people who are on the enemy side, and they don't love your Jesus. And when you begin to speak to them about eternal things, you can feel the hackles rise. You can feel the wall go up. And one of the best ways to deal with that is to shift to a story. It's so hard not to listen to a story. And so you begin to tell a story, like I'll be sitting there talking to someone on the plane, and I can just feel them just tense right up, and I'll just stop and say, you know, the other day I was talking to this person, and and I begin to tell this person that I talked to the other day, I give them the gospel. I'm just ricocheting off them, but all of a sudden the person relaxes. I'm not preaching at them anymore. Boy, that's better. Carry on. And so it's a great thing to be able to use a story, and and by doing that, you're you're actually removing, uh, an obstacle to the gospel. Well, these Pharisees and scribes, they came with their dukes up. They wanted to fight with Jesus, and he was talking to these sinners who obviously were rejoicing in the truth. They they'd love to hear the truth, and from the back of the crowd, here are these Pharisees looking down their noses at Jesus, and they they're just, they're just cruising for a bruising, you know, they they're really upset, and and they want to fight with Jesus. And Jesus stops whatever he's saying to these sinners, and he says, uh, gentlemen, can I tell you a story? And he tells them a story about these sheep, and ninety nine sheep are good little sheep. They stayed home. They didn't wander. One naughty little sheep wandered off in the hills. And the Pharisees think to themselves, well, I mean, we, we don't understand everything Jesus says, but this is obvious, isn't it? We're the good sheep that stayed home. These scoundrels are the naughty sheep that wandered off. It's not bad. And so the resistance dropped. He told them a second story. About ten coins, and one got lost. Well, you notice what he's done. He's gone from one out of a hundred to one out of ten. The camera is zooming in here, isn't it? If a, if a businessman loses one percent, he doesn't worry about it. If he loses ten percent, he starts to take it seriously. And in the third story, it's one out of two, isn't it? Fifty percent. You're in deep trouble now. But it's not till the very end of the story you find out which son was really lost. Because it's not just the father's house in the far country, there's another place called the field. Now the other son was in the field. That's the punchline. After he's told the story and he's got their arms down, he's got, he's, they've relaxed. And they've been thinking, preach it, go ahead, give it to them. You know, they, yeah, they, that's good preaching. You tell them, you tell them about wandering off and getting lost. Amen to that, you see? The prodigal comes home, and then he says, uh, would you like to hear about the other boy? I, I mentioned there were two sons. And then he goes out into the field, and he talks about this boy in the field, and that's the real point of the story. The prodigal did come home, but the other brother didn't. Many times when we're preaching the gospel, we preach to everybody as if everybody's a prodigal, and people in the audience say, well, I don't, I didn't waste my life. I didn't waste my substance in riotous living. I've been a good person all my life. I worked very hard. It's to those people Jesus comes and says, you know what? Now get the point. The Pharisees were against him, but Jesus was for them. Jesus said, you know, you Pharisees, you are the most welcome men in the countryside. There's a place for you at the table in my father's house. Isn't that the point? He came out and entreated the Pharisees. He pled with them, come on in. I tell you this, if you're going to come into the father's house, you'll come willingly, or you won't come at all. And you'll have to come through the same door that the prodigal comes through. There's only one door into the Father's house. But if you do come, why, there's a place for you at the table, and you'll enjoy the music and dancing and the food spread, everything you need. You- you've come home from a day's work, you're weary, and you're dirty, and you're hungry, and everything you need's in the Father's house. But if you're going to do it, you're going to have to humble yourself and come in the same door that the prodigal comes in. It's a classic story, isn't it? I mean, Jesus, he was the master at it, and so in telling the story, he disarmed them. And we need to do that too. We need to learn how to tell a story in such a way that we get the point across before they've even known it. It's a bit like my mother, who used to give me aspirin or medicine in raspberry jam, and and I could get it down just because she she was considerate. She she was winsome in the way she gave me my medicine. So sometimes we alienate people, we offend people unduly because we haven't thought out, how would I like to be preached to? How would I like people to come to me? Would I like them to publicly humiliate me? Would I like them to, to push me, to, to frustrate me? Is that how I'd like people to speak to me? But when the Lord Jesus spoke to these people, even to the Pharisees, he was so gracious with them, and he found mechanisms to, to get the truth into them without them spitting it out. And that's a good thing to do, isn't it? And, and there are lots of examples of that in the stories of the parables. So look for this theme of joy. Uh, I- I'm amazed at this one verse. You'll find it right here on your list, um... in the parable of the, uh... Well, I guess you won't find it on your list here. In the, in the parable of the treasure in the field. It'd be there somewhere, but I can't see it. Um, it says, for joy he sold all that he had. We shouldn't forget that when the Lord Jesus came into the world and went to the cross, it was for the joy that was set before him, he endured it. He delighted to do the will of God. It- was it hard? Oh, it was terribly hard. He, he became poor that we might be rich. But he didn't do it reluctantly. He did it with joy. He sang as he went out to Gethsemane. He sweated in Gethsemane, but he sang on the way. Oh, the joy of the heart of the Savior in pleasing the Father, in redeeming the lost, for joy, he sold all that he had. That's kind of a surprising turn of phrase, isn't it? It's a good thing the Lord Jesus himself is the one who told the story, or we might think it was a little misplaced. Many other verses that you can find there, but, but the, the, the parables are full of joyful stories, the stories of restored relationships, the joy of bountiful harvest, the joy of the wedding feast, the joy of discovering a good return on an investment. Like they, they're happy endings, aren't they? And, and so when we think about the Lord Jesus and his ministry, these stories, they weren't, uh, they weren't, um, horror stories. They were happy stories. They- they were stories full of- of the heart of God, of the- of the joy of the Savior as he reached out to bring home the wandering sheep, to discover the lost coin and the wayward son. Now, other themes that we should look for in the, the, um, parables might be, uh, the link between action and consequence. You sow wheat, you get wheat. You sow tares, you get tares. Uh, lots of, lots of the parables will have this correlation. Um, if you bury your talent, don't expect an investment. Like the woman who said, I have no interest in the mission field. And someone said, well, yeah, that's how it works. You only get an invest- investment where you have an interest. Pardon me, you only get interest where you have an investment. So you go down to the local bank and you're looking for interest, and they say, well, you haven't invested anything here. You don't get interest unless you invest. And, and so the Lord Jesus, in telling the story, says, if you put your money to gain interest, you can expect interest. But if you wrap it in a napkin and bury it, well, don't expect any return on your investment. I was visiting a long way from here, the other side of the continent, and a man was weeping, actually weeping, telling me about the condition of the assembly. Then he took me into his study. He didn't have one theological book on his shelves. He had quite a number of novels, and he had this computer there, and he had this really neat video golf game, and he's really good at it. Now, I don't fault a man for playing video golf, but was there some sort of correlation between spending his time reading novels and playing video golf and the fact that the Christians were not doing very well? I thought it was fairly obvious. Turn off the computer and go visit the Lord's people. You know, the, uh, F. W. Grant greatly admired John Nelson Darby, but, uh, Mr. Darby didn't always return the favor, and on one occasion, someone asked Mr. Darby about Grant's, uh, numerical Bible. You know, he gets into all the numbers of the Bible and the significance of all the numbers, and and Mr. Darby said that he thought it would be better if F. W. Grant spent less time on the Bible numbers and spent more time getting to know the numbers of the Christians' houses. In other words, get out and visit the Lord's people. And so the Lord Jesus, he was always engaging people. He was there for them, wasn't he? And he loved to gather them around him and to open heaven to them and tell them the stories of, of his father and, and of the provisions that had been made and how the father had sent him into the world to invite them to come to the banquet. So when we read these stories, we want to see, we want to follow, we should presume that in every parable there will be a clear delineation of action and consequence. If this, then this. If this, then this. The parables are a kind of time machine, aren't they? They're a, they're a, uh, sort of, you know, you sometimes you see one of these, um, uh, movies of a flower opening up. Well, it's time release, isn't it? The, the fact is that it took a lot longer than it took you to watch it. Or you see a sunrise, and the sun just comes rolling out of the, out of, into the heavens. Well, this is what the Lord does. In just a few sentences, he takes you from the sowing of the seed to the harvest. He takes you all the way through, from the invitation, from the meal being prepared to the banquet. The, the whole thing is done in just a short period of time. And that's why people like sports, you know, because in a few hours, you go into conflict against the enemy, and you either win or lose, and it's all settled. People watch a movie, and before the last commercial, you know exactly what happened to the plot. It's all settled. But in life, it's not like that. In life, you work with a few Sunday school kids, and then forty years later, you find out that one of them ended up on the mission field. Or you witness to a neighbor, and uh, and and then, like my grandfather Robertson, he he was, when he was ninety years old, he was visiting in the hospital, and there was a lady dying, and he asked her, what are you depending on for eternity? And she said, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, cleanseth us from all sin. He said, wow, where did you hear that? She said, uh, when I was a girl, I had tuberculosis, and they they put me out in a tent out behind the house where I lived. Where was that? Over on Whitworth Street. Oh. And she said some people had pitched a big tent o- over the field, across the field, and there was a man with a really big voice, and he was shouting out one night, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, cleanses us from all sin. And I said, oh God, that's what I need. I need to be clean. Use your blood to make me clean. And she said, all these years I've been fasting, and that was my grandfather preaching the gospel forty years before. So what the Lord Jesus does is he rapidly moves through the, the thing, and he says, you know, the little things that you did way back here, they do have consequences. And when you're sowing seed, it doesn't happen that you ride across the field sowing the seed and then turn around and harvest it on the way back. You know, it doesn't happen that way. And so we want to have some gospel meetings, and we expect the preacher to fly in, and Sunday he starts the meeting, and by Friday the harvest is all in. Oh, Jesus said it doesn't happen that way. There are people who've been sowing seed. I remember one time I was up in Long Island, and there was a woman named Elizabeth, and she stayed after the meeting, and she got saved. And when we came out, sometimes I come out after talking to a lost soul, they've just been saved, and you come out to darkness, everybody's gone home. I- I think their favorite TV program's on or something. It's the most depressing thing. This soul has just got saved, and we could be singing, Oh, happy day that- that washed when Jesus washed my sins away, but there's nobody there to rejoice with you. But not that night. There were about eighteen people standing around. We've been talking probably two hours, and there are eighteen people standing there. And we just were so happy, and we thank God for saving Elizabeth. She made confession to them all how she'd been saved. And just on a whim, I said to the first man, I said, excuse me, did you have something to do with Elizabeth being here? Well, he said, yes. He said, um, I- I was a neighbor across the street, and I used to see her coming out and get in her car every day, and I used to pray for her every day that she'd get saved. And what about this young girl here? Well, I babysat her little girl so she could come out to the meeting tonight. And what about this one here? Well, um, it's a little more money to buy your milk down at the corner store, but Elizabeth worked at the corner store, and so I always stopped in there to get my milk just so I could speak a word to her about the Lord. And two young men that had been going out delivering invitations, they were the ones that invited her to come, and, you know, all the way around that circle, everybody had something to do with her getting saved. I was just the preacher. I just rolled into town. I shook the branch. The fruit was already ripe. It just fell into my hand. Everybody said, oh, look at that, Jade Nicholson led another soul to Christ. Spurgeon said he didn't know of one soul where he was the only link in the chain. So this is, you see, the point. People say, well, gospel meetings don't work. Well, no, they don't work if we don't work at them. But they work if people have been sowing the seed all year long and working with their neighbors, and then they say, you know, there's a gospel preacher coming to town. You know what I've been telling you. He can explain it more, more ably than I can. I'd like you to come along tonight. They know exactly what they're getting into, and out of the mouth of two or three witnesses, everything's established, and the sowers and the reapers rejoice together. If you expect the, the evangelist to do the sowing, then somebody else will do the reaping, but you won't. It may well happen, but it won't happen there, you see? So the Lord Jesus, in telling these stories, says, you labor, but, you know, there's a reward coming, and I just want to remind you of that, that to you it seems a very long time, but it isn't a long time, you know. Not to me it isn't. So he takes action and consequence, and he puts them together in one little story, and he reminds us that the things we've done in being faithful here will ultimately reap results in a day to come. That's an important theme to follow through in the parables. Another, uh, another very important theme is the theme of the strategic role of the word of God. Every time a seed hits the ground, a choice is made, or at least in the parable, right? The ground receives it, receives it superficially, rejects it, or receives it temporarily until it's choked with, with the, the weeds. And, um, when we think about how the word of God comes to people, it comes just like that, doesn't it? It has life in itself. It's a living word. It has the germ, the potential to bear much fruit, but only if it's received. Now, in that story, the ground is the person. The seed is the word of God. We shouldn't confuse that because people say, who is this person that grows and then withers away? Well, it's not the person. The person is the ground. The person who superficially accepts the word of God, first of all, gives evidence that the word of God is taking some effect in their lives, but when it withers away, what is withering away? The manifest, the evidence that the word of God has had effect in that person's life. They clean up their act, they come up to the meetings, they look after their kids, they maybe clean up their language, they stop drinking, but it's not until the sun rises. Jesus explains hard times come, persecution, hard times, and when hard times come, all of a sudden they say, wait a minute, is this the Christian life? I'm out of here. And, and the influence of the word of God withers away in their life. In the next story, the seed is not the word of God, the seed is the children of the kingdom. And if it's true in the one case that, that the word of God bears influence, has a life of its own, and makes an impact on every life that touches it, it's certainly also true that God not only plants his word, he plants his people. And you're planted in that factory or that office or that neighborhood where you are. As soon as you're planted there, the devil comes along, and he plants one of his, and the whole objective is to try and tangle you up and neutralize you. So you sit down at the lunch table, and you begin to talk to someone about the Lord, and somebody comes and plops down beside and says, hey, I got a question for you. Did, did, uh, did Adam have a navel? You say, well, excuse me, but I'm talking to this person about something really important. Do you mind? Well, yeah, as a matter of fact, I got another question. Like, don't you want to talk? Don't you want to answer me? And, and they try to get you off track. They try to entangle you. And, and we're going to find this everywhere we go, that, that the devil has his agents who are trying to tangle us up. The immediate reaction is to try and pull the weeds out. That's what the moral majority tries to do. Let's just get the weeds out, you see? You know what happens? It's, it's the grain, it's the good seed that, that gets damaged. So today, if you ask people, what do you think of the evangelicals? Oh, you mean those wild-eyed people that shoot abortion doctors? It's the gospel that's been damaged by us trying to pull the weeds out. No, he says, let them grow together till the end. At, at the harvest, it will become obvious what's wheat and what's tares. Don't worry about that. But I don't want to damage the wheat by trying to pull out the tares. So there's some good practical applications in these stories, and we see again in many of these stories the strategic role of the Word of God. The subject of stewardship is important, isn't it, throughout these parables, and of relationships, that key choices make really big differences. Little things make big differences in our lives. Well. Well, I, I really think that in assemblies, we spend a fair bit of time in the epistles, but we don't spend nearly enough time in the gospels. And I think the gospels are fruitful for practical evidences of the life of Christ. How did Christ react? How did he respond? And in many places, we are quite expert at discussing fine points of theology, but really poor in interpersonal relations. And the Lord Jesus specialized in that. I, we were talking to someone recently about the Gospel of John, and I was pointing out that there are a series of stories in the Gospel of John that have to do with Jesus and women. Mary at the marriage of Cana in Galilee, the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, Mary and Martha and the death of their brother, the the Lord Jesus at the cross with Mary and John, and Mary Magdalene after the resurrection. These personal encounters are set out as a kind of series of, of events in the life of the Lord Jesus where he interacted with women, and every one of them has to do with relationships. Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour has not yet come. Go and get your husband. I mean, the story of the woman caught in adultery is obvious. Uh, thy brother shall live again. Behold thy son, behold thy mother. And then the grand finale, I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God. The Lord Jesus is the expert on interpersonal relations. And if we would go through these stories and see how the Lord Jesus described these relationships and how they ought to be, it would be a tremendous help to us, I think, as we, as we deal with one another in seeing how the Lord Jesus dealt with people. Well, uh, I'm going to take a little early break here, and uh, I know this really makes it confusing for the people who are making tapes, but I'd like to take an early break, and if we can come back, uh, for one final session, I'd like to look with you at steps to discovering the meaning of a parable. Just very simple steps, and uh, as you notice on your final page, I have a look at the parables in Matthew thirteen. I think anybody who's serious about studying the Bible is going to spend some significant time in the seven feasts of Jehovah, because they are a kind of panorama of God's dealings with Israel. And we'll all want to study the seven churches of Asia because they're the Lord Jesus' own personal assessment of the church. And we'll want to study the parables in Matthew thirteen because just as the feasts are a panorama of God's dealings with Israel, and Revelation one through three are a panorama of his dealings with the church, so Matthew thirteen and the parables there are God's overview of the kingdom, and it would do us well to spend a fair bit of time looking carefully at those stories. I, I would say that, um, Matthew uses the unique phrase to him, the kingdom of heaven, and some have debated this issue of the kingdom of heaven versus the kingdom of God, and we noticed that some of the parables of the kingdom of heaven in Matthew are described as parables of the kingdom of God in the other gospels. There are no parables in John, by the way, but in, in Mark and Luke, we have some of these parables then described as the parables of the kingdom of God. And I would suggest to you that the kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of God, but it's the kingdom of God during that time while the king is in absentia, while the king is in heaven. So we have the first four, which are given by the seashore to the multitude, and first four are full of sabotage and subterfuge, where the enemy is sneaking in, stealing the seed, sowing tares, putting the leaven into the meal, this monstrosity of a mustard tree with all the foul birds in its branches. The picture that's given is the way things appear to be, and I'm so astounded that many of God's people think that's the way they are. And they tell me, you know, the church is in such terrible shape, and nobody's getting saved, and this and that and the other thing, and they are so depressed about the condition of things. That's the way things appear to be. But, you know, the Lord Jesus is right on schedule, and he knows what he's doing, and he said, I'll build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail, and he's going to win the day. And so he sends away the multitude, and he takes his disciples into the house, and he shuts the door, and he tells them another series of parables in which it's quite obvious that he is going to win the day. He tells the story about this magnificent pearl and this wonderful treasure, and then he tells them about the dragnet and how in the end he's going to sort the whole thing out, balance all the books. He knows what he's doing, and he's doing it on schedule. So these parables in themselves give to us two tiers, shall we say, of the kingdom during the time while the king is away. Things as they appear to be, things as they really are, and again we see there are some things that are hidden. There are things that are not obvious to the curious gawker. They're only obvious to the honest seeker after truth. So let's take a little break, and uh, then we're just going to spend a few minutes looking with you at steps to discovering the meaning of the parables. Father, again, uh, we're thankful that the Spirit of God is here taking us by the hand, leading us along. We're grateful for these wonderful stories that the Lord Jesus told, but how grateful we are that they're not just stories. They're not, they're not fables. They're not make-believe. They're not, they're not, uh, hope so story. They... they're the door through which we step into the realities of which they spoke. There really is a banquet feast. There really is someone willing to give all that he had to redeem us. There really is a heavenly bridegroom coming back. There really is a reward day. There really is a harvest. And so, while we would understand the parables as being stories, they are not merely stories. Behind them all is the great, the greatest story of all. Help us to enter into it, we pray, to embrace the truth, to delight in the fact that the one who told these stories so long ago is determined to fulfill them in their reality, in the minutest detail. And we long for that day when he does come to take his bride. When in the night season the cry goes out, the bridegroom cometh, we say, even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus. We thank thee for the opportunity to fellowship together again for a little while, for the kindness of the Lord's people in providing for us, and for those who've had the vision to arrange these meetings. We, we're grateful, O God, and thank thee for this land of freedom that allows us to meet like this without fear. We would pray for our brethren in bonds today, people who'd love to be in a meeting like this and can't be here. We pray thy blessing on the whole church around the world, by whatever name they call themselves. O God, bless thy people, we pray, not because we deserve it, but because we ask it in the Savior's name.