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Luke xix: 11-27 we have another of our Saviour's parables, very similar to the one now before us. There, he speaks of himself as "a nobleman who went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return." This language was borrowed from a custom that prevailed in those days. The headquarters of the government of the world then was in the city of Rome.
The two condensed parables or extended metaphors, which follow the vindication of the disciples, carry the matter further, and lay down a principle which is intended to cover not only the question in hand, their non-observance of Jewish regulations as to fasting, but the whole subject of the relations of the new word, which Jesus felt that He brought, to the old system.
It is important to notice at the outset, that in this instance the Lord addresses his instructions specifically to his own disciples. The three parables which are recorded in the preceding chapter were spoken to the Pharisees; immediately after these, and in continuation of the history, the evangelist intimates that "he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man," &c.
One, from within, was his own vivid imagination, which saw visions, allegories, parables, revelations, in every common event.
He who does that which he sees, shall understand; he who is set upon understanding rather than doing, shall go on stumbling and mistaking and speaking foolishness. He has not that in him which can understand that kind. The gospel itself, and in it the parables of the Truth, are to be understood only by those who walk by what they find. It is he that runneth that shall read, and no other.
And even as I did discern the vanity of present things and hate them with a perfect hatred, so likewise I counsel thee to decide thereon, that thou mayest treat them as something alien and quickly passing away, and mayest remove all thy store from earth and lay up for thyself in the incorruptible world a treasure that can not be stolen, wealth inexhaustible, in that place whither thou must shortly fare, that when thou comest thither thou mayest not be destitute, but be laden with riches, after the manner of that aptest of parables that I lately showed thee."
That the aged father who has given up his property to his children on condition of their maintaining him for the remainder of his life, is very far from meeting with delicate attentions, is indicated by the proverb current among the peasantry—“Don’t take your clothes off before you go to bed.” Among rustic moral tales and parables, not one is more universal than the story of the ungrateful children, who made their gray-headed father, dependent on them for a maintenance, eat at a wooden trough became he shook the food out of his trembling hands.
Nay, God himself, knowing the nature of the creatures formed by him, has condescended, in the earlier revelations that he made of himself, to teach by symbols; and the greatest of all teachers instructed the multitudes by parables.
And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore. And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow;
I think when the Lord has explained a part of one of his own parables, the portion of it which he has left unexplained is in a different position from a parable which he has not explained at all. When he gives any interpretation, his silence has a meaning as well as his words.
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