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His own contemporaries said of him, no man has ever taught the way he does. And even some of his enemies said that he speaks as one who has authority and not like the scribes and the Pharisees. The teaching of Jesus is not frivolous. It's not superficial. There's not a desultory word that ever comes from his lips. Everything that he says has substance to it. Everything that he says carries the very weight of his own authority.

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During his earthly ministry, Jesus was a masterful teacher. As you just heard from R.C. sproul. His teaching even caught the attention of his enemies. But did he always teach in order that all of his hearers would understand? Welcome to a new week on renewing your mind. This week, Dr. Sproul will be walking us through several of Jesus parables. These messages are from his 12 part series, the Parables of Jesus, and we'd like to send it to you along with his title, what do Jesus Parables Mean? Please be sure to call us this week with a donation of any amount at 800-435-4343 and we'll get this resource bundle in the mail for you. So what are parables? Are they like an illustration in a sermon so that everyone can better understand the meaning of the teaching, or is there more to their purpose? Here's Dr. Sproul.

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Tonight we're going to begin a brand new series entitled the Parables Jesus and what I Intend to do in Our Times Together is first of all, give a brief explanation and definition of what a parable is and how those parables were used by Jesus in his earthly ministry. And then after that brief introduction, it is my plan to give an exposition of 11 parables that I have selected for this course. Now, Jesus gave many more parables than those 11, but in the time constraints that we have for this series, we're going to focus our attention on just 11 of them. Let me begin by saying, I think that it's safe to say that our Lord Jesus Christ was the greatest teacher that ever walked on the face of the earth. And I say that not only because he was the very incarnation of truth, and so that the content of his teaching was altogether impeccable and was of divine origin. But not only was he the greatest teacher that ever lived because of the supreme content that he delivered, but also he was a master pedagogue. That is, his style of teaching was extraordinary. His own contemporaries said of him, no man has ever taught the way he does. And even some of his enemies said that he speaks as one who has authority, and not like the scribes and the Pharisees. Now, let me just pause for a second and comment briefly on that statement that Jesus spoke as one having authority. The word there that is translated by authority in some instances is the Greek word which I will transliterate here, exousia, Exousia. It's usually translated by the English word authority, but it can also be translated by the English word power. And this interesting word is made up of a prefix x and the root ousia. And I think you know what that prefix X means. If you're ever in a difficult situation, the theater you're in catches on fire, you look for the sign that says exit, because you know that that's the way to get out. And so the prefix ex means simply from or out of. But what I'm most interested in is the root of this word exousia. The word ousia is the present participle of the Greek verb to be. And so it can be translated by the word being or essence or substance, or even more crudely, simply stuff. And so if we look at the etymology of this word that is translated authority, it means literally out of substance, out of stuff, out of essence, out of being. And the idea here is that the teaching of Jesus is not frivolous, it's not superficial. There's not a desultory word that ever comes from his lips. Everything that he says has substance to it. Everything that he says carries the very weight of his own authority. And so we understand that Jesus uniquely taught from this standpoint of authority, the authority of God himself, where he said, I say nothing on my own authority, but I only say that which has been given to me by the Father. Now, in his unique proclamation of truth with authority, in his pedagogical style, he's perhaps most noted for his use of parables. And a brief comment on that. First of all, the idea of the parable is not something that began or was invented by Jesus. There was a tradition among the Pharisees and the rabbis of that day to use parables. But their use of parable was different slightly from Jesus use of it. The use of the Pharisees was to explain or to illustrate the meaning of the Old Testament Mosaic Law. Jesus use of parables was not simply to illustrate previous revelation that had been given and delivered through Moses and the prophets of the Old Testament. But his use of parable was to give new revelation, revelation that was heretofore unknown. And so it was an important difference from his use of parable and that of the pharisees Second of all, you won't find a parable anywhere in the New Testament outside of the Gospels. The Gospels are filled with the use of parables, but they are strangely absent from the rest of the New Testament and their most infrequent. And in the Old Testament, perhaps you will remember the most famous parable of the Old Testament, and that was the one delivered by the prophet Nathan when he came to David after David's sin with Bathsheba. And he told them the story of this rich man who had many sheep. And he took this one sheep from the poor man who loved this sheep dearly and arrogated it to himself. And when David heard that story, he was outraged. And he said, who is that man? Find me that man. Bring him here. I'm not going to put up with that in my kingdom. And so even with the use of the parable by the prophet Nathan, David didn't get it until Nathan got in his face and said, david, you are the man. Now, I mention that famous parable of the Old Testament because in that case, Nathan came to David with judgment. He came in a moment of crisis. And this is one of the ways in which parables function so richly in the New Testament. The very word parable, if we break it down, it comes from the Greek parabolo. Para, again, is the prefix, and you're familiar with it. You have paraligals, parachutes, para ministries, para this and para that. And a para means something that is alongside something else. Paralegal works alongside the lawyer as a helper to assist him in a certain way. And the root of that word, parable, BAAL or baleo, means to throw or to hurl. And so if you break the word down, parabola means something that is thrown alongside of something else. And we see how Jesus uses it. He is teaching an important concept. And in order to clarify his teaching and his meaning, he throws the parable alongside of it to illustrate the truth that he's given. It's been said that in real estate there are only three important factors that determine the value of a property. The first one is location, and the second one is location. And the third one is location. So we say it comes down to location, location, location. It's been said of preachers that the most important part of their proclamation is illustration. Illustration, illustration. But again, we try to use illustrations to simplify, to clarify, to heighten people's ability to understand what we are saying. And there is an element of that contained in the use of parable by Jesus. However, there is another element an element that is somewhat mysterious and sometimes gives us pause. Some people find it objectionable, but we'll look at that in Mark's Gospel, in the fourth chapter, right after Jesus had preached his famous parable of the sower, he said at the end of that parable, let he who has ears to hear, let him hear. Now, why would a speaker ever make a statement like that after he tells a story? If I give an illustration in my sermon, do I say at the end of it to you, he who has ears to hear, let him hear? Because we're almost 100% certain that everybody who's present in the congregation has two ears. They may have a percentage of those who can't hear and are hearing impaired. But again, the vast majority of people who are sitting under the sermon are able to hear the sound waves that come through the ears. And so why would Jesus say, he who has ears to hear, let him hear? Well, he's obviously not talking about a simple response to an impact on the auditory nerve in the ear. He's talking about people who have an ability to hear, to understand, and to embrace the truth of it. To hear, not simply the audible sounds that are being made, but to get it and to embrace it. In fact, there's a strange phenomenon in the Greek language with respect to hearing. The verb to hear is the verb akouane, from which we get the English word acoustics. And the word for obedience in Greek is hupakouein. And that prefix hupo is the prefix from which we get the English word hyper or the word super. And so it's interesting, in the Greek language, there's hearing and then there's obeying what you hear. And obeying what you hear means really hearing it, a hyper hearing, a super hearing. And so when Jesus gives this statement, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. What he's basically saying is that he understands that there were people there hearing his teaching who didn't hear never really pierced their understanding or their heart. And so Jesus makes a distinction between those who hear and those who don't hear. And we get further explanation of that in this strange passage in Mark 4, where we read these words after Jesus said to them, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. But when he was alone, those around him with the 12 asked him about the parable. And he said to them, to you, it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God. But to those who are outside.