Five get in :) Five left outside :(

[@MrBazinthenow]

All of the Bible is For us, but not all of the Bible is directly to us. Becareful to not read the Bible as if every verse is about you. This is the problem with most Bible reading. Remember we have verses directed at Noah. " Go build an Ark". Not every verse is directly to you. There are verses to specific people and specific groups. Every verse has a context and an audience. Every false teaching comes from wrongly applying scripture. When Jesus is speaking, it's not always about you and directly to you. That's what I'm hearing when I hear you preach. " Jesus said to ' us'. This verse is telling ' us'. No. The verse has a context and a specific target. It's specifically referring to Jews at that time. The church is not in view through a great deal of Jesus teachings. The Church only begins in Acts 2

[@commonschurch]

Completely agree that context is important and that’s why we spent the opening establishing that this parable is a response to the disciples’ questions at the start of chapter 24. Without understanding the context you can’t transition to contemporary parallels faithfully.

[@MrBazinthenow]

@@commonschurch The context goes further than just being a response to questions by the diciples. I think that's obvious. It goes further than that. Before we get to any application, it needs to be first established who the audience is. When it's been spoken. To Israel or the church? What biblical timeline is it aimed at? There is a rabid compulsion within churchinity to go straight to application as every verse is directly to ' us'. A narcissistic reading of scripture in which we are always been spoken to directly

[@commonschurch]

All of that is true, and yet Jesus teaches from within a tradition where there is a long and rich history of appropriating stories and applying them to new context. In fact, I might even argue that in using the Jewish genre of mashal (parable) Jesus explicitly invites us to reappropriate his tales for our lives. While, I do agree that too often we make sweeping statements like “this parable is about…“ Or “this parable means…“ but the problem there is that those statements clamp down the parable to a specific interpretation rather than open them up to our imagination as a parable should. Grace and peace.