This is lessons that I learned from my Rabbi that are so beautiful that I had to share them. We, as Christian believers are familiar with the Greek idea of Jesus, we tend to picture him with wavy hair, walking in white robes with chiseled features.
I’m not saying he didn’t have wavy hair or chiseled features, but let’s get to know him without removing his Jewishness.
The truth is Jesus was a 1st century Jewish Rabbi, He uses idioms that we often interpret literally and he throws in debates of the day that we are unfamiliar with like:
- Why he spit in the dirt and put it on a blind man’s eyes instead of saying, “Be healed.”
- Why did he write on the ground?
- What did He write on the ground when they brought the woman caught in adultery before Him?
We haven’t been taught that Jewish people believed that the spit of a first born son could be healing. Most of us do not know that our Messiah was writing a verse from Jeremiah in the dirt or why he was writing that verse. Without this cultural content we are sometimes missing what He was truly teaching.
The Rabbi’s say that a teaching without a parable is like a basket without handles.
This means without a parable there is no way to understand a teaching and take it with you. Don’t take that literally.
In the time of Jesus and even today, a teaching is usually broken into 3 parts:
- Halacha (which means to walk)- this was teaching how to live your faith and walk it out. How to make sense of the scriptures and how to use them.
- Aggadah (story and explanation)- this is the telling of a story from scripture and what it means
- Parable
A great way to begin to view things from the Hebrew perspective is to think of The Word as a diamond. When you look at that diamond you see lots of different surfaces on it (cuts, facets or faces) and if you hold it up to the light it will reflect a pattern on the wall. If you turn it slightly it will reflect a different pattern. The Rabbi’s call this the 70 faces. Our entire bible is like that, it has a primary meaning, but there are many other facets to explore. It is like the analogy of peeling away the layers of an onion.
Every parable that our Messiah taught his primary meaning was about the Kingdom of God/Heaven. Matthew calls it the Kingdom of Heaven, as a Jew he doesn’t use God’s name while Luke calls it the Kingdom of God. So a really neat trick to grasping a deeper revelation about God is … every time you see the word heaven, substitute it with the word God.
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
What you are going to learn is the Kingdom of Heaven isn’t really about where you go when you die and it isn’t about just the future when Jesus comes again. The Kingdom of God is right now, amongst us and in us. This is why John the Baptist and Jesus said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!”.
The Greek word hand means within a hand’s grasp, it’s right in front of your face. It is right within the reach of your hand. It is a present reality whenever and wherever God’s will is being practiced.
My Rabbi used this analogy:
Imagine going to the opera and you go early and see the orchestra warming up in the pit, behind the stage you can hear the players getting ready. Because it’s an old theatre at times you can catch glimpses of the people behind the old worn curtains. Those glimpses of what you see happening are symbolic of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is what is constantly going on but mostly behind the scenes where we don’t really see it all.
Every time you love someone (that’s God’s will ) and it’s the kingdom of God. Same thing with forgiving someone, being kind, charitable… those are all the kingdom of God. When you put others needs before your need that is the kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God is fueled by our passionately pursuing the Lord and being a light to others.
Basics of a Parable
What you will notice with most Rabbi’s is you will never get a direct answer. They have this school of thought where you introduce a subject or a student asks you a question and the Rabbi follows this with a question. Jesus is recorded as asking 307 questions in the Gospels.
- “Why do you call me good?” (Luke 18.19).
- “What do you want me to do for you?…Can you drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” (Mark 10.35-38)
- “What do you want?” (John 1.35-37)
- “Will you give me a drink?” (John 4.7)
- “Do you want to get well?” (John 5.6)
We ask questions for information; Jesus asks questions to provoke transformation and awareness. These questions confront the listener with their own thought process, preconceptions, assumptions, and beliefs. Within the questions are the answers. Parables do the same thing, they are meant to provoke transformation and awareness, to get you to confront your own assumptions and beliefs.
If you notice, Jesus almost always gives at least two parables at a time. Why? Because things are established by two witnesses or more witnesses. These couplet and triplet parables will always be related to each other because…. they are a witness.
Have you ever seen an old one room school house?
In those old school houses you had one teacher but students of various ages. The teacher would group the students by age and each group had its own teaching based on their age but the entire class was able to hear each groups lesson.
A parable is like this one room schoolhouse- we each hear the parable, just like we each are holding a diamond up to the light, but what we understand is based on the level we are at right then. If someone is a new believer in Christ, what he/she hears and understands isn’t wrong, it is just not on the same level as someone who has been a disciple for years. Both the newbie and the older disciple have the same diamond (our Word) and the same Kingdom of Heaven is at hand in both of them but each is looking at a different facet of understanding. Neither is wrong, it’s just one person has peeled more layers of the onion off.
CAN AN INTERPRETATION BE WRONG?
The answer is yes and you can find an example of that in the Parable about the Garment, New wine and wineskins.
NOTE: As we have seen in scripture, not everyone is ready to receive truth so sometimes they have rejected a parable and find it offensive.
Idioms
Let’s use the example – “It’s raining cats and dogs”. If you were to go to India and use that example in their language they might look at you funny because it doesn’t appear as an idiom from their perspective. What if they took our idiom literally and they built teachings around it that mislead generations of people away from some truth?
I’ll give you an example of a great idiom that we miss but it isn’t going to lead generations of people away from the truth.
“As the rooster crows”.
Did you know that roosters and chickens were NOT allowed within the city walls in the 1st Century? I didn’t. I honestly thought animals were probably running around all over. I imagined each house having chickens out in front, a goat in a small enclosure with a cow.
What if I told you the rooster didn’t refer to a “cockle doodle crowing bird” but that it was an idiom? What if I told you the “rooster” is a man?
In the morning when there are still a couple stars showing, and the blue in a man’s tzit tzit no longs looks black. A man designated as “the rooster” would go to the Temple mount and sing “Shema Israel”. This was their wake up call to get up and get ready for prayer (Shachrit). In case you like to hit the snooze alarm, this crier would wait for a bit and sing it out again to tell people, this is your second warning to get up and headed out to prayer. If this is sounding familiar, the rooster would then give a third warning for those people still trying to hit the snooze alarm.
When Jesus said, before the rooster crows three times you will have denied me… Peter would have understood that before the morning temple worship service that he would deny the Messiah three times.
YOU HAVE HEARD
If a Rabbi gave a parable, he would say “You have heard” and this meant all heard it. Sometimes you would hear Jesus say, “You have heard it said” and he’s pointing to this same thing.
If people understood a parable and applied it to their lives, Rabbi’s would say ,”You have heard and You have heard, you have seen and you have seen”. Meaning they heard it, understood it, and applied it to their life.
If you have rejected a teaching on a parable, a Rabbi would say “You have heard, but not heard, you have seen and not seen”. And this is the pattern for all parables throughout the bible including the Messiah’s.
WHAT IS THE FIRST PARABLE IN THE BIBLE?
The first time something is used in scripture is the clearest example of a word, it is your interpretative guide. The first parable in the bible is found in 2 Samuel.
1 The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. 4 “Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.” 5 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this must die! 6 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.” 7 Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! 2 Samuel 12:1-7
Did David hear the parable? Yes, but did he hear and hear it?
No, not until Nathan points out he is the man… then David heard and he heard, and he saw and he saw because this brought David to a place of repentance.
APPLICATION OF THE DIAMOND AND SCHOOLHOUSE
When you read a parable, find out which character stands out the most to you and look at it from that point of view first. Then go back and look at it from each characters point of view. Turn the diamond because each of these views are about growing you. If you get nothing from a parable then you have heard and not heard.
SECRETS
Rabbi’s will tell you that every parable has a secret. By using the word secret they don’t mean it is mystical and hidden, they mean that it has a key within it. That key is the main theme like our Messiah’s parables revolve around the Kingdom of Heaven. Those are the basic steps for starting and hopefully there is more to learn along the way.
For more on this series, please click on the links below or you can access them from the menu at the top of the page.
Parables of the Messiah- Sheep, Coins and the Lost son
Parables of the Messiah- The Pearl of Great Price
Parables of the Messiah-New Garments and Wineskins
Parables of the Messiah- The landowner & workers
Parables of the Messiah- The Two Debtors
Parables of the Messiah- The Unmerciful Servant
Parables of the Messiah- The Urgent Invitation
Parables of the Messiah- Contemptible friends and Corrupt Judges
Parables of the Messiah- The Tower and the King
Parables of the Messiah- The Good Samaritan
Parables of the Messiah- The Shrewd Manager
Parables of the Messiah- The Watchful Servant, thief and ten virgins
Learnings of a Tent Dweller 