Lessons From the Parables of Jesus _ Patience and Perseverance

ch want to remember and remind myself and others that we are a church that follows Jesus more than a political party one of my messages a month ago I mentioned a political candidate and I will refrain from that mistake again and as anybody who speaks publicly and does not use a manuscript occasionally the words that come out of our mouth are I’d like to take that back I was in a closing I was in a closing argument in clamus County before a judge and I thought

the other side was being particularly stingy so since I was raised in the South I in my closing argument used a word that out of the South means stingy and and the judge stopped me in the middle and said Mr Moore what was that I said judge I’m from the south that means stingy said okay you can finish and as I recall that did not hurt my client to use that word but a week later in Chicago it made national news that another attorney used that

same word in closing and got reprimanded for it so you know I’m not going to tell you what the word is I guess I could it’d be a risk do you promise not to get offended if I tell you what the word was okay it’s really out of the South and it’s the word niggardly it means selfish but it’s out of my vocabulary now except for now because because it really it really does push the pale in terms and and it’s ugly in that sense although

it didn’t mean that in the South whatever so additionally people have come up to me with the previous messages and said John if the borrow is the slave of the slave of the L should I not have any debt that’s not what the Bible says the Bible doesn’t say you shouldn’t have any debt it says be careful with your debt are you going to get yourself in an enslaved position that’s the point of that even in Israel every 49 years the year Jubilee much of the

debt was forgiven in in the land of Israel and much of the many of the landowners went back to the original land it’s kind of the spiritual version of what we do in the law called bankruptcy but and which I might add is a legal process in America but anyway the the point is to be careful about debt the other Parable I used was that if you’re given to gluttony put a knife to your throat that’s not literal but it does mean this if you’re given

to overeating push away from the table that’s what it means actually being wellfed even fat in the Old Testament was a sign of blessing of God kind of like having your health as opposed to leprosy was a blessing of God but even on that that Parable warns us don’t go to excess so those are the kind of the dangling oh the other dangling participle is that I gave you some ideas out of my own personal financial position in my message on the soils and you remember

there when we talked about wealth I talked about the building that I’ve bought and the new vehicle that I’m going to buy and I said every 10 years you should swap your vehicles well again I’m proven wrong and I had a wonderful lady come up to me in in a cafe and say John my car is 23 years old and I’m still driving it so you know you can’t be right and I all I could say back to her is it had to be a Toyota

and she was so so anyway that gets us caught up okay we are fishing an aquarium both today and for the next 8 to 10 weeks and by that I mean that we are people who like the fish have a limited sphere that we live in and it shapes our values because it’s our culture and short of the Providence and revelation of God it’s all we would know those four walls those one two three four walls and we could look as a fish I assume outside

the aquarium and maybe wonder about it to some degree but we wouldn’t know anything about life apart from that well the parables are like God taking a lightning strike and going Wham right into the right into the aquarium all of a sudden you’re saying whoa that’s information I wouldn’t have on my own that’s what a parable is that’s what Revelation is and it is that instruction by God which steers our lives in a way that counts for eternity in that sense the Parables have as their

backdrop the prophet Isaiah and you’d say well that’s a bit of an odd way to go to The Parables but the parables are spoken to Believers to believers who are Midstream in their Christian walk they’re not unbelievers they are like the disciples committed to the proposition that Jesus was sent from God but in that process Isaiah speaks and they draw Jesus speaks out of The Parables of Isaiah first of all with Isaiah and chapter Isaiah chapter 50 Isaiah has four what we call Servant parables in

them in the book of Isaiah and Isaiah chapter 50 was one of the contexts that Jesus Drew from when he said I offered my back to those who beat me’ my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting because the Sovereign Lord helps me I’ll not be disgraced therefore have I set my face like flint and I know that I’ll not be put to shame he who vindicates me is near who then will bring charges against

me let us face each other who is my accuser let him come let him confront me wow bang right out of the blocks Isaiah says and Jesus draws in that context and says this is my destiny the servant Parable that you’re more the servant passage that you’re more familiar with is in Isaiah 52 and Isaiah 53 and again that powerful description of what Jesus Prospect was at the cross Isaiah chap 53 verses 1-6 4-6 surely he took upon me he surely he took up our pain

and bore our suffering yet we considered him punished by God stricken by him and Afflicted but he was pierced for our transgressions he was crushed for our iniquities the punishment that brought us peace was on him and by his wounds we are healed we are all EX sheep having grown a astray each of us to our own way and the lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all that was the precursor to Jesus and Jesus we know Drew on Isaiah to introduce himself we

know that for example from Matthew chap 12 where Jesus speaks again quoting from Isaiah as he begins to teach in Parables Jesus said here is my servant whom I’ve chosen the one I love and whom I Delight I’ll put my spirit in him and he’ll Proclaim Justice to the Nations he’ll not quarrel or cry out no one will hear his voice in the streets a bruised Reed he will not break and a smoldering Wick he will not stuff out till he has brought Justice through to

victory in the name of the Nations and put their hope in him now have you ever been in a situation where you only hear part of what is said to you that’s a common kind of human feature that says I’m going to pick up on what I want to hear and not hear the rest for example Jesus said the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders the chief priests and the teachers of the law he must be killed and on

the third day be raised from the dead straight out Jesus Through Isaiah and through his own words said that’s my destiny you might understand it differently but my destiny is death and Resurrection but we hear what we want to hear because we have our own expectations our own agendas it’s like the scientist the inductive scientist who was studying the hearing capacity of insects so he took a flea off of a dog and put it on a petri dish and pulled off one of its six legs

and said jump and the flea jumped he did that with the second and the third and the fourth and the fifth leg again saying to the flea jump and the flea jumped he pulled off the six leg and said to the flea jump and the flea didn’t jump and the scientist said well see that proves that if flea with no legs cannot hear went right over the facts in a way to twist them in a way to get my own interpretation well parables are like riddles

they are things that if you don’t watch it you read your own expectation your own interpretation into it I thought Rob’s message last week was excellent to talk about how to find the will of God because it debunked a lot of the myths associated with that I served at the Bible College and in the church in a leadership capacity with a faculty member and a board member at the church who decided at one point boom to leave with a woman and go to Las Vegas well

that’s not hoil in the Christian church and so we moved into the process of addressing that with Matthew 18 and a number of us went to Las Vegas and we said what’s up H how how do you do that he said well I know this is of God and so we with captured Fascination wondered what in fact he would do to prove that this was of God he said well Las Vegas has a zero vacancy rate in apartment an apartment came available for us and we

took it that shows me that that’s from God this man who left his wife for another town with another woman you know in the law we call those people human wastelands but in Christian circles we don’t call Christians that but but he was absolutely looking at life and his grid through his preconceptions in this case through his own personal sin but it doesn’t have to be sin I was raised at Central Bible Church under the great ministries of John G Mitchell and Dwight custus at one

point Dwight custus decided that God had told him to go to California in a different pastorate he lasted a year he came back and he stood before the congregation he said I blew it I made the wrong decision so sometimes decisions that we make not only are con are confounded by our own expectations by our own misunderstandings but it times we actually just go out there and try it and see how it happens and then take the direction as it comes beyond that parables in Matthew

Chapter 13 and see your Bibles hold up your Bibles good Matthew Chapter 13 excuse me Matthew chapter 12 as we said have as their introduction the prophet Isaiah but they don’t just deal with Isaiah they deal with spiritual issues that have to do with really dramatic descript I for example they brought Jesus a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute and Jesus healed him so he could both talk and see all the people were astonished and said could this be the son of David well the

Pharisees said only way that can happen is if Beelzebub did it that was the wrong thing to say to Jesus because Jesus said that I tell you everyone every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven but the blasphemy against the spirit will not be forgiven anyone who speaks a word against the spirit of God will be forgiven but anyone who speaks against the holy spirit will not be forgiven either in this age or the age to come only place in the Bible that talks about we’ll get

to Parables we really will the only place in the Bible that talks about Unforgiven sin unforgivable sin and I think contextually it is this it was attributing the works of Jesus to Satan I don’t think historically that can happen today I think all sin is forgivable today but that was such an onus it was such a event that the enemies of Jesus were saying I’ve got to come up with some kind of explanation for this other than the fact that this man is from God the

Son of God so it’s in that context the warnings from Matthew from from Isaiah the warnings from Jesus about Sin and be abub that we come to The Parables Now The Parables so far this is about the sixth message that we’ve given on Parables and we talked about the parable of the soils for three weeks we talked about the Mustard Seed we’ve talked about the ways in which that we persevere in the midst of weeds that are growing up among the good crop and we’ll come

back to that next week as we finish Matthew 13 but for today we’re talking about two very short Parables that spring out of the Central Central part of our text and yet we understand them to be of great encouragement in Matthew Chapter 13 we see for example again in the context of Isaiah the words from verse 14 you’ll be ever hearing but never understanding this excuse me this is the prophet of prophets Isaiah you’ll be ever hearing but never understanding you’ll be ever seeing but never

perceiving for this people’s heart has become callous they hardly hear with their ears and they have closed their eyes otherwise they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn and I will heal them so what we learn about parables in Matthew 13 is there’s no fence sitting there’s no neutrality there’s no DMZ Zone with Parables you’re in or you’re out the revelation of God is either going to have an impact in our hearts and our minds and

lives or we go the other direction and even what we have meaning our understanding is taken from us we know that because before we’re end before we finish Matthew Chapter 13 we’re talking about eternal destruction we’re talking about the kind of phenomena that leads to one being condemned forever and apart from God and we’ll talk about more about that next week no one spoke more about hell than Jesus and we’re going to talk about judgment and reward and Hell next week but for today we are

in the parable of the hidden treasure and the Pearl verse 44 of Matthew 13 the Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field when a man finds it he hides it again parenthetically I don’t know why that little phrase is in there we talked about in understanding Parables we don’t embellish them with too much platitude and oh this is is a gospel within a gospel and what does that mean it doesn’t mean anything or you don’t reduce a parable down to just one

issue but in terms of the details of a parable be careful about not trying to find a meaning for every detail somebody maybe smarter than me I haven’t found it in commentators explain why he hid the why he hid the treasure again but it says and then he to his Joy he he so he went and sold all that had and he bought that field so the parable of the treasure was that this man who had a suspicion there was something out there that had value

began to look for it he looked for it patiently and perseveringly he had a desire to understand what the kingdom of God was like as compared to the kingdom of man he knew simply put that there was more to life than just what he saw with his eyes and so he began to seek and in finding it he said I’ve got to have that even if it costs me everything that I have and so he went and he bought the field and the treasure was his

this treasure was something that was of a great joy a great value to him that he couldn’t live without this was preceding of course by the parable of the of the yeast and the dough and there the instruction is the kingdom of God is like yeast in a dough verse 33 the Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast in a in a in a is like yeast for a woman who took and placed it in a large amount of flour and it worked its way through the

dough two little short parables in Matthew 13 one about yeast that spreads through bread and the other about Treasures that were found in a field what’s Jesus teaching us what’s this lightning strike into the aquarium that says you wouldn’t know this but that God told you this but the kingdom of God you understand is like these illustrations what does it mean well certainly yeast through a bread has a common kind of a feature that it takes time and again in that Parable the one who who

enjoyed the fact of the yeast of the bread says sold everything he had and he bought it so it’s a great value this kingdom of God that is persistent it’s going to continue you ever found yourself wondering that you wake up and say is this all there is Lord where are you today in the events of my life in the circumstances that I don’t understand and yet this Parable says the kingdom of God is continuing it’s not just like the Mustard Seed which starts very small

and grow to Great length it is a feature in your life and mine of faith that continues to expand even at times when we don’t know it but it’s there to be sure the prayer of the saint who said I get tired waiting Lord certainly applies in this situation Ruth harmes caulin in her book hurry just a little Lord writes the following Lord I know there are countless times when I must wait patiently for you waiting to develop endurance it strengthens my faith and deepens my

dependence upon you I know your Sovereign God not an Aaron boy responding to the snap of my fingers I know your timing is neatly wrapped in your incomparable wisdom she she has her theology down right on the button but Lord but Lord You’ve appointed prayer to obtain answers we’ll talk about the Widow and the unrighteous judge in in Luke 18 even David the psalmist cried with conf confidence Bolding it’s time oh lord for you to act God on this silent sunless morning when I’m hedged in

on every side I too cry boldly you’re my father and I am your child so Lord Could you hurry a little that’s a common kind of phenomena in the Christian faith Could you hurry a little Lord I’m I wouldn’t say I’m wearing out but I sure am weary of waiting for you to act in the Providence of my prayers for my family for others that I pray for I have I don’t I I give you details of my life so that you can understand that it’s

a measurement that we all apply there are five men I pray for every day and by faith I I think through the circum circumstances around each of their lives and ask that those circumstances rally them to the point of seeing their need for Jesus and two of those five are family members three are not but the the goal is in faith to both pray and wait patiently for him to act the concern of course of each Christian is that God’s purposes will be acted out in

the lives of those around us and certainly the yeast in the bread speaks of patience it speaks of the issue of waiting for God to act it’s his timing she had her theology down but she said Lord can you just hurry up a little bit that there’s nothing wrong with that prayer you can pray that I pray that but the second parable is equally fascinating because in the Treasure that’s found in the field we have the issue of perseverance of someone who is pressing understanding that

there’s more to life than what they now have and they’re willing to give everything they have for it remember these are disciples these are ones who have been told that the prize comes to those those who run the race of the years and day days and years that God gives them they’re to be used in a way as Ecclesiastes says when you have a task to do do it with all your might Ecclesiastes chapter 10 and verse 11 they are to with urgency and enthusiasm persevere

so to these disciples that are in this aquarium without the revelation of God that they know very little about the kingdom where only thing they know about is the kingdom of man and the kingdom of Earth Jesus teaches that in fact we are to continue on in fact we saw this in the parable of the soils anyway because in the parable of the soils certainly we are worn in the soil having to do with the the Troubles of this word the persecutions that come because of

because of the word that that individual that heart quickly failed because the roots were not great so that speaks of the lack of patience and you get farther in the soil and you find that the one who is distracted by the worries of this world and the riches of this age that their growth is choked out that has to do with perseverance so Jesus is teaching in various ways in MA multifaceted ways about what it means to be part of the kingdom of God to not

be choked out in our walk to not be ones who quickly fail or in the prayer that Jesus had for even the Apostle Peter when he predicted his failure he said Peter Satan’s desire is to sift you but I’ve prayed that your faith not fail does that fit into your category anywhere in your Christian Life it should we are people who are in a race that we going to make it to the end of our race or we’re going to slip off the track somewhere sooner

and Jesus prayed for Peter that his faith would not fail what does that mean we’ll talk more about that next week certainly our relationship with God is secure but the blessings and affirmations for our life will come at What’s called the Judgment seat of Christ so Jesus teaches about patience and he teaches about perseverance where does that leave us in terms of understanding how we are to live the Christian Life the first is that we understand that he is a God who is Sovereign and his

Affairs for our life are directed in ways that at times the pastor that I knew who went to California for a year apparently got it wrong or maybe there were lessons to be learned in that one week that did not come after that but certainly the issue of Direction in life is one that we both trust to God’s Providence in our life we make the most of the opportunities that we have and then we leave the results to God when I gave my own personal illustration

on financial circumstances I explained that as a business owner there are certain decisions that you have to make for your employees that are honorable to God the scriptures talk about not taking advantage of them not withholding wages from them them that’s my task as a building as a business owner and I’ll give an account to God about that if you’re an employee and not an employer your task is to work as unto the Lord equally daunting that you have ACC counting and a calling that’s greater

and different than even just the human requirements of a job description so certainly the issue of Understanding God’s purposes in our life is is one that starts with believing that in the sovereignty of God he makes available opportunities for us that we use until we’re direct we’re directed differently but secondly the the really the message of The Parables is to persevere it is to continue it is one that says there is no stopping point for the Christian as long as he’s drawing a breath it’s really

never giving up probably the four most famous words that were all ever said within the discipline of archaeology the most four most famous words were these do you see anything pretty innocent question in itself but in 1922 Dr Howard Carter a British archaeologist went back into a land that had been ancient had been examined archaeologically in Egypt for many years and he was convinced there was still something there so he and his team spent six years looking for additional Egyptian artifacts in the midst of big

boulders and landscape that was barren at one point he went into What’s called the Royal Valley and in combing that area and again in asking the question do you see anything he peered into one particularly dark cave which was black and he saw the following wooden animals statues chests gilded chariots carved cobras onent boxes vases daggers Jewels thrown a wooden figure of the Goddess sequin a handcarved coffin of a Teenage King in his own words he saw strange animals statues and gods everywhere the glint of

gold it was of course the Priceless tomb and Treasures of King tatan Kanani the world’s most exciting archaeological Discovery probably ever with more than 3,000 artifacts that came out of that Tom and it really was introduced ultimately not just by the drama of what he found but the words do you see anything let’s talk about vision for a minute as Christians we have both physical eyes and we have the eyes of our heart spiritual vision is looking at life through the lens of God’s eyes I’ll

repeat that spiritual vision is looking through the lens of God’s eyes it’s saying not what I see physically but God what what are you doing in this situation what have you got for me when my plans change when my schedule changes I’ve gotten into the habit of increasingly asking that question who should I meet that I wouldn’t otherwise meet what opportunity do I have to give an encouraging word about God in Christ that I wouldn’t normally have that often for me happens in the context of

the gym the where I have men and women who are working out on a regular basis but are also encountering the reality of the limitations of life and the limitations of health and so if in fact one of my friends says I’ve got health issues and there are three or four now that do I’d be sure to say I’m praying for you I’m praying that God will work that out in your way that pleases him and pleases you have yet to have that turned down but

the point is use your schedule use your opportunity use the eyes that you have to look through as if God were looking at the situation and believing in fact that if things aren’t going as fast as you want it to go I.E patience if things are not happen happening the way you want them to happen that you think are best and will work out that is perseverance even so God’s at work and his kingdom is around us and in us and we bow a knee to

his work in our life in Jesus let’s pray Lord we are grateful for your word we’re grateful the fact that you teach us that there is more to life than just life as we see it that you remain faithful in our lives and in fact give us instruction and direction in a way that allow us to count for eternity and it’s to that end that we give you praise today in Jesus name amen sorry one moment well we get the privilege this morning of singing some

wonderful hymns which Maxine’s wonderful CD is full of all of those standards that we all love so we put together a few for for you all to join us so please stand what can wash away my S nothing but the blood of Jesus what can make me whole again nothing but the blood of Jes Jesus oh precious is the that makes me white as SN mother F I know nothing but the blood of Jesus nothing can forc in theone nothing but the blood of Jes Jesus

not of good that I have done nothing but the blood of Jesus oh precious is the that makes me white as S no other I know nothing but the blood of Jesus this is All My Hope and peace nothing but the blood of Jesus this is all my righteousness nothing but the blood of Jesus oh precious is the that makes me white as snow oh other found I know nothing but the blood of Jus oh preciou

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