Why doesn’t Jesus just come to the point and stop with the cute stories? Because there is a large crop of souls who are in His immediate audience that He doesn’t want to understand the spiritual principles He is talking about. Jesus is using parables to intentionally block people from understanding Him and receiving salvation. Now there’s something you’ll never be taught in Sunday School, and yet here it is in black and white. This is why context is so important. Whenever you find someone in the New Testament quoting the Old Testament, look for a cross-reference in your Bible and check out what was going on in the passage that they are quoting from. When Jesus quotes Yahweh’s chilling words in Isaiah 6, the Jews He is talking to immediately understand what He is saying. But today we Christians just blow by this most shocking revelation and say, “Jesus spoke in parables to help make His messages really clear to His audience. What a smart Teacher.” What an absolute crock! Jesus Himself said that He spoke in parables to confuse people and prevent them from understanding Him. The parables were a negative, not a positive. And once you understand what Jesus’ intentions really were, the parables are downright disturbing.

Today we’re so busy quoting “God is love” that we forget that He’s a lot of other things, too. Hateful, wrathful, vengeful, violent, grudge-holding—these are all traits that God has in great abundance as well as love, and all of these traits come to the surface whenever God is speaking to the third group in our list: rebels who He has completely rejected