In this week’s lesson, Ray Vander Laan spoke on the importance of knowing geography and how that can change our understanding of certain parables.

Jesus knows in this broken world, we will face floods and trials. Some of us have been there or are there, and some of us haven’t gotten there yet, but we will.

It had dawned on Ray that Biblical teachings need to be put not only in Biblical and historical context, but also geographical context. Taking a story out of a setting does not do the story justice. The setting may well have more clues as to the meaning of the text. Always ask, “Where did this happen?”

The Biblical world prefers to tell its truth in sensory ways with word pictures and metaphors. The story is God’s revelation, it does not just contain it. It is one story, not sixty-six stories. God wants people to Yadah – to know – the story experientially, personally, because we are a part of that story.

In the west, we think of knowing something as memorization. In the east, knowing is inviting others into that experience. Jewish people are story-tellers. Telling parables in that culture is a sign of wisdom and authority. Rabbis who could speak in parable were and are highly respected in that culture because they learned how to explain things using story.

In Hebrew, they didn’t write vowels until very recently. The Hebrew word ‘mashal’ was written ‘m-sh-l’, so when you see m-sh-l, the word they are using could be referencing ‘mashal’, meaning a story that explains and applies a text, or ‘meshol’, which means ‘wise ruler’.

Solomon was both – a wise ruler and one who spoke in parables. He spoke over 3,000 parables recorded in text.

Ray then went into Scripture for prophesy. Micah 5:2 says, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”

It has been prophesied that there will be a ruler with great authority. They thought he would demonstrate with parable. When Jesus comes and begins to tell parables (and Jews will tell you that Jesus was the best) then those people must have thought, ‘Wow, this guy is an incredible parable teller, I wonder if he could be the ruler over Israel, because he tells mashal.

Many human characters in the Bible are given power to do miracles, so that alone would not have been enough to convince the people. These parables aren’t just stories for kids, but saying to the world, ‘I may be the one who is King of the universe.’ Why? He’s a parable teller.

He then went on to describe parables as ‘basket handles’. A basket without handles is difficult to carry. So if the basket is your teaching, the handles are the parables. Rabbis would start with a Bible passage, tell a parable to explain the passage, and another to emphasize the point. They wanted one in front and another behind to make teaching more memorable using the same theme, plot and characters.

“Ah, Jesus is using the same set of characters, the same plot.” But sometimes Jesus’s parables would have a very surprising twist. Disciples did not always understand, and we see in Scripture they ask Jesus to clarify the meaning behind some of them, like the parable of the sower where the seeds land in different types of soil.

A parable’s content would have come from something they understood about daily life so the listeners would be able to put themselves in the shoes of the situation being described because they have experienced what is being spoken of.

Rabbis start with Biblical text and then interpret it. The point of the parable is to show how we are to obey the text. They show what God wants us to do. There is a Christian idea that parables were to confuse the listener. In reality, it doesn’t confuse the listener, but tries to make clear how to respond.

Ray then points to Matthew 7:24-29. It reads, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against the house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and dose not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.”

What comes before this in chapters five and six? The famous Sermon on the Mount. There is a whole host of teaching where this parable would become a basket handle. Here is all those teachings from the Sermon and here’s a story to help you figure out what to do with them.

The word ‘house’ is a bigger word in Hebrew than it is in English. The Hebrew word is ‘beth’, pronounced ‘bet’. Beth generally means place or space. From the classroom, Ray said, “This room could be called Beth Midrash, or House of Study.”

Beth also not only refers to the home you live in, but more broadly that family. Jesus was of the House of David. Being of the house of David does not mean that he lived with David, but that they come from the same family, the same bloodline.

When Jesus said “This man built his house on…” He is not only speaking of building a home for his family, but what is revolves around and where it is centered.

Jesus says, “Whoever hears these words of mine but does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.” When Jesus speaks about building houses on sand, they disciples would not have pictured a beach because that was not their primary reference.

These people lived in the desert where it never rains. The greatest danger here is not the heat or scorpions or lack of water – it’s being killed in a flood, even if it does not rain in that area.

Giant canyons carry water from the mountains, and Ray told his students that if you didn’t see it, you wouldn’t believe it. When the water comes through the canyons, it sounds like a train and those in the canyon have about ten seconds to get higher than the water is going to be 

Climbers who have tried to escape the waters have perished, body parts found miles from one another due to the sheer force of water, soil and rock hurdling through the canyons at unbelievable speeds. And you can’t stop it.

“When you’re in trouble waiting for the flood to sweep you away, tell God you’re my rock, my safe place to stand,” Ray said. He provides safety from flood waters. This concept would have not been new to the Jews in Biblical or modern times. They know their geography.

When water evaporates, silica is found. Where water slows down, that is where fine sand is found. Jesus says there was a man who built his beth, his house, family life, values, hope, on sand. He built it foolishly in the middle of a flood canyon.

The wise man who follows Jesus’s words built his beth on rock. Rains came down, floods came up. Jesus uses this parable to say, ‘I just taught you a bunch of stuff. If you shema, if you hear and do, you will build your house on the Rock.

If you want to handle the hard times (because they WILL come), if you want to get through it and out the other side, do what I tell you. If you don’t, when those times come, it may not be so simple to fix the situation you get yourself into. Building in the middle of a flood channel will eventually be a problem. Jesus concludes that someone who builds on the sand is someone who hears but does not hear.

What does your foundation look like? Where is your home built? Are you safe from the canyon flood when the rains come?