Sunday message · Jesus’ Most Confounding series
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Message Summary
On a snowy Sunday in the weeks leading up to Easter, Pastor Phillip Santillan launches a series on Jesus’ most confounding statements, sayings that surprise or confuse by going against our expectations. Clarity often reflects on Jesus’ life and teaching before Easter, and this year people submitted sayings that confounded them. Phil begins with Matthew 13:10–17, where Jesus explains why he speaks in parables, an explanation that has itself confounded people for hundreds of years. His hope is that the church will lean further into the wonder of who God is.
In Matthew, people were still unsure about Jesus. Even John the Baptist, who proclaimed him in chapter 3, asks in chapter 11 whether he really is the one, and the religious leaders claim his power comes from Satan. When crowds gather by the lake in chapter 13, Jesus does not deliver a lecture; he tells stories. After the parable of the sower, the disciples ask why he speaks to the crowds in parables, and he answers that the secrets of the kingdom have been given to them but not to the crowds.
After reading dozens of commentaries, Phil admits that even mainstream scholars disagree on what Jesus means. D.A. Carson lists common explanations: parables are simply illustrations, Jesus preferred the open-ended and enigmatic to plain truth, or he meant to hide truth. Carson gives reasons to doubt each, since Jesus taught in many forms and Matthew 13:34–35 suggests he was disclosing something. The word translated “secrets” is closer to “mystery,” something present in the Old Testament but hidden until it was revealed. Paul describes the mystery of Christ in Ephesians 3:4–6: the Gentiles are co-heirs and partners in the promise. Jesus then quotes Isaiah 6:9–10 about people who see but never perceive because their hearts have grown dull.
Most scholars, Phil says, conclude that Jesus spoke this way for two reasons: to reveal truth to those who are believing the mysterious, and to conceal it from those who are denying the obvious. One writer on the parables says they are meant to upset people’s existing ideas, not to explain everything to their satisfaction. Jesus knows the human heart. Truth sometimes hardens us instead of softening us, and we are terrible listeners, hearing our own voice over everyone else’s. Just as he warned against throwing pearls to swine in Matthew 7, Jesus uses discretion, because the goal is not simply proclaiming truth but restoration.
So Phil asks the church, as the series goes on, to step back and say wow before asking what Jesus means, admitting how much we still have to learn. That humility positions us to be led by Jesus and his Spirit, trusting that the message of the cross, foolish to some, is the power of God to those being saved (1 Corinthians 1:18). He also asks how those who proclaim the gospel can grow in discretion and wisdom, speaking in ways that move people toward restoration rather than simply proving themselves right, so that even those denying the obvious are given the grace to lean in.