Parables are a window into another world—the Kingdom of heaven, a mirror to see ourselves, descriptive not prescriptive, and both revealing and concealing.

When we don’t know the Word, it’s because we don’t want to know—not because of a lack of information.

Jesus loves us enough to tell us we have to receive him the way he offers himself—on his terms, not ours. If we continue to harden our heart against Scripture, there is a point at which we lose our ability to respond (Matthew 13:10-17).

It is possible to get yourself in such a position that God’s Word can no longer be a benefit to you and that the gospel brings judgement rather than blessing to you.

While the power and the progress of the Kingdom is unstoppable and victorious, in our hearts it is a fragile, delicate thing that can easily be choked out by petty things that are passing away.

Jesus wants his disciples to see that as his followers we will be alone. We are the minority. While our country values autonomy, we know the opposite to be true as Jesus says in his Word, “deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24-26).

While everyone expected Jesus to reject the prostitute, he instead publicly encourages her that her repentant faith and love is actually stronger than the self-righteous Pharisees.

Jesus knew he would willingly take on greater pain and greater humiliation on the cross for us than in any possible circumstances here.

We will love God only to the degree that we are aware of how completely holy and loving he is and how completely undeserving and sinful we are.

After we profess faith in Christ and start following him, the cross should always be getting bigger to us as we become more aware of our sinfulness and more aware of God’s holiness. Our sin should become more serious and weighty to us as we increasingly recognize and experience God’s holiness.

There are six ways we minimize sin:

• • Defending: when you are confronted with sin, you explain things away, justify your decision, and compare yourself to others.
  • Faking: you strive to keep up and maintain appearances in front of others and are never fully honest about what is really going on
  • Hiding: you feel shame and are afraid that you won’t be accepted by others if you share your struggles, so you isolate and keep your sin in private.
  • Exaggerating: you think more highly of yourself than you ought to, and you make everything sound better than it really is.
  • Blaming: you are quick to blame others for your sin.
  • Downplaying: you give too light of weight to sin in your life as if it’s normal and not a big deal.

Once you are clear on ways you minimize sin, now what?

If Christ is your focus and that is your routine, your love for him will grow.

God gives and grants wealth to people to bless others.

Greed is an unhealthy desire to gain more possessions or status with the objective of owning, having, and getting.

The threat of losing possessions or status produces fear which can lead to greed.

The desire for more is the ultimate renewable resource.

Our biggest problem is a worship problem, and a major contributor that that problem is greed.

Like the rich fool, you can have a strategically sound plan but totally morally mismanage the situation.

A person is a fool to store up earthly wealth and not have a rich relationship with God.

God’s economy tells us that our debt is so great that he has to send Jesus to pay it—not that I can earn it in some way on earth and pay it at the door of Heaven.

Money is a way to grow in that rich relationship with God as we use money to serve and help grow the kingdom.

Wealth toward self (greed) = poverty before God.

We need accountability in our lives to think biblically, live appropriately, save wisely, and give generously.

Understand that we make financial decisions based on emotion. We need to ask ourselves, “How much of my self-worth is tied to what I have?”

God's Kingdom is founded on the basis of God's grace, and God's grace confronts and exposes our self-centeredness, self-righteousness, and pride.

We are in need of and dependent on God for everything since we are powerless to do anything about the measure of evaluation in God’s Kingdom.

Envy, jealousy, and comparison make us so fixed on ourselves that we miss what God is doing in others’ lives.

Self has no place in God’s Kingdom.

In God’s Kingdom, the way to life is death, the way to glory is humility, and the way to reward is dependence.

God’s grace does not discriminate on the basis of our performance.

We say we believe Christ died on the cross for our sins but often we act like he died on the cross to make us happy.

The gospel is the great equalizer. True grace that leads to salvation does not take our performance into account.

We are not qualified to run our lives better than our own Creator.

How we move towards fear is what deepens our faith. As we move and obey, even as it creates tension, every step we take is an opportunity to find more life.

It is in the face of fear that we discover Jesus is actually enough for us.

We evangelize around the things that we care about.

Dealing with their fear, the faithful servant orients and structures their life around helping others trust and obey Jesus.

If your life is in Christ and you are hidden in him, because of his death there is nothing left for you to fear. Even death itself gives us more life in Jesus.

Don’t overlook the people right in front of you for the people you are not actually responsible for.

When we put our trust in ourselves, we make God transactional.

We all have some version of a righteousness resume that makes us feel worthy; it is a list we use to determine our worth outside of Jesus. We have to surrender that list to God daily and trust that we do not need a list.

Where there is pride, there is judgment of others (Luke 18:9).

If we continue to think we have anything to offer, our pride will prevent us from humbly coming to God for everything.

Life in God’s Kingdom is about the posture of our hearts, not our earthly accomplishments or admiration.

If you feel like a failure, find encouragement in the fact that God’s grace is not based on you, it’s based on him. Your eligibility in God’s Kingdom is based on the finished work of Christ not the finished work of you.

The same gospel that frees you to be exposed is the same gospel that draws you back in after telling on yourself. You can know you are living in the freedom of the gospel when you allow yourself to be exposed—when you have someone who fully knows you who you can regularly confess your sin to.

We can’t forgive on our own; it has nothing to do with our own ability and everything to do with Jesus’ finished work on the cross.

Just like the forgiven man who “couldn’t pay” (vs. 25), we too are unable to pay for any of our debt on our own. Our hope for the forgiveness of our own sins is in Jesus alone.

It does not matter what people have done to you, it only matters what Jesus did for you.

We often deceive ourselves into thinking we can manage our debt on our own by reducing it in our minds to a level we think we can handle or by elevating ourselves to think we are powerful enough to manage it.

When someone has been forgiven debt as big as ours, they are no longer bound to a high sense of justice. Our need to protect ourselves, our reputation, or our fragile, easily wounded feelings is significantly lowered when we fix our eyes on the cross. We can be merciful and overlook things.

This parable is a warning not to be the person who receives forgiveness from God but does not extend forgiveness to others.

We are called to forgiveness from the heart. This does not include faking it, fantasizing about hurting the people who have hurt you, or holding onto bitterness.

Stop looking at the people who have hurt you and dwelling on what they owe you, but instead, look at Jesus and dwell on what you owed him that he paid for you—you can fund the forgiveness of others with the forgiveness given to you by God.

You can be gracious and kind to those who have offended you because of the work Jesus has done for you.

We don't need to be about a form of religion. We need to be about an authentic relationship with God that is personally transformative.

How we react to circumstances that do not go our way will reveal whether or not we truly meet God on his terms.

God desires for us to be desperately aware of our brokenness and humbly willing to repent.

This parable reveals to us a tragedy, a warning, and hope—we have to recognize the tragic nature of the human condition, the warning that settling for religious form will not sustain us if we are content apart from the power of God, and the hope that we can receive the message of Jesus as offered to us and depend on it no matter who we are or what we have done.

The good is what God is responsible for, and the bad is what we have done to the good that he has given us.

The hope of the gospel is not that those who live the “right life” will inherit the kingdom of God but that the revolutionary nature of Jesus’ words are that the prostitutes and tax collectors get to the front of the line ahead of people who follow all the rules and customs. Those who receive the message as offered, have a willing heart that is constantly repenting and moving towards holiness, and depend on Jesus for everything are those who are living in the freedom of Christ.

God is far more willing to forgive us than we are to be forgiven.

We equip and motivate our members to get involved in someone else's life, meet their needs, and help them grow in their relationship with Christ.

Jesus often uses parables to remind us that his standard for us is unattainable in our own strength, and only by his grace and through dependence on him can we love as he does.

Our righteousness resume can never empower radical obedience.

We have had a dramatic increase in economic segregation as we have insulated ourselves with comfortable neighborhoods and comfortable lives. How did we get here? What do we do about it? Watch the video on our Parables series page as David Delk dives deeper into this topic specifically.

If we live and love others by self-reliance, we might be nice, appropriate, respected, and maybe even successful but we will never be spiritually powerful.

Jesus calls us to a love that is inconvenient, personal, sacrificial, purposeful, and responsible.

If Jesus rebuked religious people who walked by on the other side of the road from the needy man, then what would he say to people who built entirely different roads so they would never have to see them in the first place?

If we do short-term nice things for relatively well-off people and ignore the people who are hurting in our culture, can we really say that we love like Jesus?

If we don't love with great love, maybe it's because we don't realize how much we've been forgiven.

"Many of those most in need of our care are facing chronic issues and demands, troubles that won’t go away, or wounds which take a long time to heal. Insufficient kindness in those circumstances is mere salt to the wound, and ultimately brings grief to the recipient.

Costly, covenantal kindness makes the return visit, it engages in follow-up—it withstands rebuffs, it can listen to frustration, it knocks the door when the blinds are drawn, it carries the broken until they are whole, it nurses the dying until they are gone, it feeds the hungry until they can provide for themselves, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, it never fails."

—Andrew Roycroft

The parable explained:

• Son of Man = Farmer (sows)
• Field = World
• Good seed = People in the Kingdom of God
• Weeds = Those who belong to the evil one
• Enemy = Devil
• Harvest = End of world
• Harvesters = Angels

The irony of our difficulty with the word “judgment” in terms of the almighty God is that we, as humans, sit in judgment about everything. We are constantly measuring whether we are being treated with fairness.

We love getting justice for ourselves, but we don't want justice done to us. Do we want a God who evaluates, judges, and rids the world of evil, or do we want a God who lets it all go?

When we tell God we don't think he should judge, we are making a judgment; we critique God for doing something we are doing ourselves.

From what we understand, for those who trust in Jesus, judgment was poured out on Jesus instead of them, and their name is written in the Book of Life. For those who have not, they will have to stand on their own merit and deal with their own sin, as their names are written in the Book of Deeds. In other words, if you have trusted in Jesus, you are judged according to Jesus’ deeds. If you trust in yourself, you are judged according to your own deeds.

If you have ears to hear, eyes to see, and a heart to understand, you should incorporate this truth and respond.

According to Jesus, there are many non-believers in our church. Since not all are believers yet look like they are, we will see some people fall. We should be sobered by these words and examine ourselves regularly according to 2 Corinthians 13:5.