Craig Blomberg refers to one of his colleagues, Professor Elodie Emig, who “once suggested to me a remarkably concise big idea that incorporates all three lessons of the similarly structured parable of the two sons in Matthew 21:28-32. In this parable in which a son who refuses to work in his father’s vineyard later changes his mind and goes to the vineyard, in which a son who says he will work in fact doesn’t, and in which the father pronounces the former rather that the latter as having done his will, the three prongs of the passage can be neatly summed up with the affirmation, “Performance takes priority over promise.”[1]
Read moreJesus used shock value in his parables
I had a homiletics teacher, Steve Brown, who taught us, that if you have a thought in the study that you think is to bold or shocking to say in the pulpit, say it. I would not go that far. But Jesus, in his parables, did make some shocking statements or at least introduced the element of surprise. Craig Blomberg acknowledged this dimension of parables: “More often than not, there was a surprising reversal between the character a first-century Jewish audience would have expected to be the hero or good example and the one who actually turned out to play that role.”[1]
Read moreJesus the Master Storyteller (of parables)
People love good stories. Children, for sure, love stories and ask for the same story to read over and over again. I don’t know how many times I have read Alice in Wonderland to our boys. I would finish reading a story, and they would say, “Read it again, Daddy.”
Jesus, however, did not tell stories just to entertain; He preached biblical stories, parables, to persuade! Donald Grey Barnhouse was a great sermon illustrator who used illustrations to persuade his congregation to be doers of God’s Word. He said, “All of life is an illustration of Christian doctrine.”
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