A WARNING: THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE
There are several parables here that, if we imagine them as intended for OUR future, we can easily miss what they meant for the future of the original audience.
The opening verse may give us a clue as to why Herod and Pilate are at odds with each other during Jesus’ trial. Galilee was Herod’s jurisdiction. And Pilate has had some of his subjects executed; and in the Temple no less.
Some scholars have speculated that this Galilean uprising may have been led by one Judas of Galilee mentioned in Acts 5:37. About 20 years earlier, he had begun encouraging people to NOT pay taxes to Rome. It’s possible that his revolt had gotten too big and Pilate cracked down on them recently. This is only conjecture however. There were frequent rebellions and conspiracies against Rome which met with severe punishment. Whichever group it was, with Jesus and the disciples being from Galilee, someone probably thought He’d want to know the news.
Jesus uses the “breaking news” to issue a warning. The Galileans who were executed weren’t worse sinners than the average person. And neither were the people who died in the collapse of a tower in Jerusalem. But, Jesus says to them, “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
I don’t think Jesus is talking about mortality in general. Notice the 2 examples:
- Killed by Roman military
- Killed in the collapse of a structure in Jerusalem.
I wonder if Jesus isn’t giving the Jewish people a warning like the prophets of old. Repent or you will perish in the fall – the collapse – of, not just a tower, but the whole city of Jerusalem at the hands of the Roman military.
If this is in view, the Parable of the Fig Tree that follows makes perfect sense as a parable concerning the nation of Israel. God has a history of calling them His “fig tree.”
“The Lord says, “O Israel, when I first found you, it was like finding fresh grapes in the desert. When I saw your ancestors, it was like seeing the first ripe figs of the season. But then they deserted me for Baal-peor, giving themselves to that shameful idol. Soon they became vile, as vile as the god they worshiped.”
Hosea 9:10 NLT
God is referring to the patriarchs and the Exodus. Back then, Israel was like fresh grapes and first-ripe figs. The Baal-Peor incident happened before the Children of Israel even got into the Promised Land. But now, Jesus can find no figs at all.
“For a nation has come up against my land, powerful and beyond number; its teeth are lions’ teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness. It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree; it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down; their branches are made white.”
Joel 1:6-7 ESV
Again, God uses the vine and fig tree imagery to describe His land and people. Remember that the Israelite version of “the American Dream” was for every man to “sit under his own vine and his own fig tree.” Jesus’ audience knows this. So when He begins a story with “A man had a fig tree planted IN a vineyard…” it’s oozing with national symbolism.
Here are some questions that will help us think through the parable. I’ve put the answers at the end of the post.
- Who planted the fig tree of Israel in its vineyard?
- Who has been coming for three years now looking for the fruits of repentance and righteousness in Israel and found none?
- What is going to happen in the year after the 3rd year? What major biblical event happened that might be said to have cultivated and fertilized the people?
- Was there fruit after that?
- When did the fig tree finally get cut down?
SABBATH HEALING 1
Reading the text closely, we have noticed that sickness, disease and disabilities are never treated as if they’re all the same. Some have a demonic element. An unclean spirit is “cast out” which brings about a healing.
Some have no connection to the spiritual realm at all. They are purely physical ailments. The man born blind in John 9 was not blind because of his or his parents’ sin or any connection with an evil spirit. It was simply a birth defect.
This woman who is bent over is in yet another category. She “had a spirit of infirmity,” or a”disabling spirit” for 18 years. But Jesus does not cast a demon out of her because she is not possessed. The text is clear that that there is some kind of spirit attached in some way to her. Jesus doesn’t just heal her. He frees her from the spirit. We do not see Him directly rebuke a spirit, but He says to the assembly that “Satan had bound” her for 18 years.
I wonder if we moderns aren’t often treating infirmities with drugs in the body when what the person really needs is to be “loosed” in the soul.
Perhaps medical science is telling us HOW a person is sick, but not WHY.
I don’t think doctors are going to come up with a blood test that exposes spiritual sources of physical ailments, so the only way we would know if an illness has a spiritual cause would be to have spiritual discernment.
The bent woman feels rather like an object lesson in the context. Jesus has come to His own people. They are bound by Satan. They have exalted themselves and have been brought low and are not able to lift or straighten themselves up. Jesus has come to help the sinner get his life straightened out. The sinner cannot do it on his own. The LORD has to set us free from the bondage of Satan.
The woman glorifies God for being set free but the ruler of the synagogue is angry about it because it’s the Sabbath.
This is also a pretty accurate picture of Israel’s leaders. They are more interested in their interpretation of the scripture than in people being freed from the bondage of Satan. They would rather reject their Messiah than accept Him if He won’t do things like they think things should be done.
Jesus continues to teach on this theme of Israel rejecting their Messiah.
He tells about entering through a narrow door. And that the time to enter is NOW. The opportunity to receive Him as Messiah will not last forever. And by the time some of them begin to realize that maybe they should’ve paid more attention to Jesus, it will be too late. They don’t know that destruction is coming in about 40 years. They don’t know that their children and grandchildren will be slaughtered in the streets. Jesus is warning them. He knows. That is why He weeps over the city and says, “your house is forsaken,” (v35).
We are very likely in a similar situation with not too many years left before destruction. The time to pray, the time to get right with God, the time to forgive and to make things right with people in our lives is always right NOW. We have no guarantee that we will see tomorrow.
LUKE 14
This chapter kind of mirrors the previous.
We have another Sabbath healing, Jesus calling out pride and hypocrisy, a parable about not getting hoped-for results and a last ditch effort to get them, and even another mention of a tower- not falling but being built. It’s interesting.
SABBATH HEALING 2
Jesus has been invited by “one of the chief Pharisees” for lunch on the Sabbath. There is a man there – guest or family member we don’t know – with edema; excessive fluid usually in the limbs. The old term for it was “dropsy,” which, unfortunately always makes me picture someone dropping things.
Jesus heals him and, just as in the case with the bent-over woman, He says to the Pharisees that if they would take care of an ox on the Sabbath day, then it’s certainly lawful to take care of a person.
If the woman was a kind of picture of Israel, perhaps this man is too. Edema is when the body won’t let go of excess fluids. It’s holding on to what it should let go. And Israel – probably in a cultural over-correction from the idolatrous past – has been holding on to every letter of the Law plus every drop of rabbinic commentary and tradition. They cannot even recognize what actual keeping of the Law looks like when their own Messiah does it. They have become swollen. Not physically with fluids, but spiritually with pride and stubbornness. And Jesus is there, ready and willing to heal them even on the Sabbath; perhaps especially on the Sabbath. It’s the day for ceasing from your own labor (and the pride that goes with it, “look what I did”). It’s the day when you stop working and start resting in the provision of the LORD. I can’t think of a more appropriate day for Jesus to heal someone.
TWO MEALTIME PARABLES
Jesus would’ve been a fantastic dinner guest. I’m sure His stories had everyone’s attention. He delivered brutally honest critique wrapped in an illustration everyone could easily grasp.
The first parable was for his hearers to imagine themselves at a wedding banquet. In that time, the spaces to the left and right of the host were the places of honor. And then it was kind of on a descending scale from there. The further you were from the host, the less esteemed your position.
If you assumed you should sit near the host, imagine how embarrassing it would be to be asked to move. But if you chose a humble place, it would be an honor to be asked to move up closer.
“Hearing this, a man sitting at the table with Jesus exclaimed, “What a blessing it will be to attend a banquet in the Kingdom of God!””
Luke 14:15 NLT
Jesus responds with a second parable about a meal. The man who made the comment seems to assume everyone is as eager as he is to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus knows this isn’t the case. He’s been inviting people into the Kingdom for 3 years now and the majority of the guests have declined. The ones who are actually showing up are the poor, blind, lame, and disadvantaged.
This is, yet again, pointing to Israel rejecting their Messiah and how they are about to miss their opportunity. The Jewish leaders have, (with only a handful of exceptions), given all kinds of reasons why they cannot come to the feast Jesus is giving.
“Sorry. Not enough signs”
“No prophet comes from Galilee”
“He breaks the Law because He gathers grain and heals on the Sabbath and asks other people to carry bedrolls. That can’t be of God.”
The poor and sick don’t have such fine notions. They’re too desperate to be picky.
In the final portion of the chapter, Jesus uses a rhetorical device called hyperbole [pronounced high-PER-buh-lee]. It’s when you state something in an extreme way to make a point. Example:
- Fact: we waited 19 minutes
- Exaggeration: We’ve been waiting for half an hour.
- Hyperbole: We’ve been sitting here since the Stone Age waiting for you!
😐 Oh… I use that a lot. Didn’t know I was being like Jesus.
🤓 It kinda thought it meant “bowling with ADHD.” 🎳
No. It’s a literary technique of extreme exaggeration to make a point.
🤓 Ok. But i still think it would be a good name for a bowling alley. Hyper-bole! ⚡️🎳
🙄 It’s hi-PER-buh-lee.
🤓 Then why didn’t they spell it that way?
I wish I knew. English is weird.
When you want to use hyperbole as an adjective, it’s “hyperbolic.”
🤓 hi-PER-buh-lick?
No. It’s pronounced hyper-BALL-ick.
😑 I give up.
🤓 Not me! I’m hooked on phonics!
Let’s just get back to Jesus using hyperbole.
When Jesus says…
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
Luke 14:26 ESV
…we are not to take that any more literally than we would take the very next verse:
“Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”
Luke 14:27 ESV
The apostles never baptized a person then told them to go chop down a tree, carve some beams out of it, and have someone nail him to it. That would be a literal interpretation. Some people very sincerely say “I believe we should take the Bible literally.” But they don’t go around…
- Wringing people’s noses til they draw blood (Prov. 30:33)
- Claiming that God has wings and feathers (Ps. 17:8, 91:4)
- Telling legalistic Christians to castrate themselves (Gal. 5:12)
- Poking out their eyes and hacking off limbs like some demented horror film (Mk. 9:43-47, Mt. 5:29-30).
You get the idea.
During the Anabaptist movement in Switzerland, both Catholic and the new Protestant churches took Jesus’ words in Mark 9:42 literally and so they made a law in Zurich in March of 1526 that made adult rebaptism a crime punishable by drowning. Millstones were too expensive to be thrown into the river, so these believers were typically tied up and thrown in a lake or river or even locked in a metal cage on a chain that could be hauled back out when the deed was done. And their executioners could stand calmly on the bank believing they are doing what Jesus said to do. That’s where “taking the Bible literally” can end up.
There is figurative and hyperbolic speech in the Bible. We can and should take ALL of the Bible seriously but it cannot all be taken literally.
🤔 How are you supposed to know when it’s supposed to be literal and when it’s supposed to be figurative?
This is where the rest of scripture interprets scripture. Does Jesus consistently tell His disciples to hate others or to love them?
😐 He usually says to love.
Right. And the Apostles? Did they teach that Christians should hate their parents, children, siblings, and spouse?
😐 No. They said to love them.
Then would this one instance override all the rest of scripture? Or should we understand this passage in the light of all the rest and conclude that Jesus is using this extreme language to make a point?
🙂 Ok. I get it. That’s why we have to know what the whole Bible says then. So we don’t get one verse out of whack.
Exactly.
Bearing our cross and following Jesus is about laying down our lives as a living sacrifice. It’s about giving up the pursuits of the flesh and of this world.
It’s kind of like that song, “I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more…”
You don’t literally have to walk 1000 miles to prove to someone that you love them. And you don’t literally have to be physically nailed to a cross in order to “be crucified with Christ.”
Jesus isn’t giving a contradictory command to hate our family. Rather, He is constantly telling His disciples to LOVE one another. He is using the word “hate” to shock everyone into paying attention. The point is: if you want to be His disciple, there is no one on earth you can love more than Jesus. He must have your highest devotion. If you had to choose between Jesus and your spouse or a family member, there would be no hesitation. You would choose Christ.
There IS a high cost to following Jesus. We would do well to count the cost and not let anything or anyone in this world take the place of Christ in our hearts.
It makes me think of a song from years ago by The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir:
True Christians do not live for this world. We lay down our lives, dead to sin, but alive to God. We give Him everything.
It cost Jesus everything to redeem us.
ANSWERS:
- God
- Jesus
- Pentecost, the birth of the Church
- There was a little fruit, but the nation as a whole did not embrace Jesus as their Messiah.
- In 70 AD the Romans demolished Jerusalem and ended Judea as a state. The Jews were scattered among the nations (called “the Diaspora”) until 1948.
To The Reader 