*Title:* The Pedagogy of Parables — Pastor Kyle Baldwin, June 20, 2026

Teaching is a skill — anyone who has ever tried to teach, in a classroom or on the back porch, knows it. In this sermon, Pastor Kyle Baldwin asks why the greatest Teacher who ever lived chose to teach the way He did. The Bible tells us Jesus taught primarily in parables: “All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them” (Matthew 13:34), fulfilling Asaph’s ancient words, “I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old” (Psalm 78:2). Those “dark sayings” were not darkness at all, but truths still hidden — and Jesus, the true Light of the world, came to bring the secret things of God out into the open.

So why not just speak plainly? The disciples asked exactly that (Matthew 13:10), and Jesus’ answer is not the exclusion it first sounds like. The multitudes were not shut out of the kingdom’s mysteries; they were unpracticed in spiritual things, unable to bear plain speech the way the disciples could. Parables required listeners to think rather than passively listen: they concealed meaning from hard hearts, but for the honest inquirer they awakened curiosity — Jesus, Ellen White writes in *Christ’s Object Lessons*, “desired to awaken inquiry… to arouse the careless, and impress truth upon the heart,” and He was always willing to explain to anyone who honestly asked. Like every good teacher, Jesus taught to the middle, met people where they were, and brought them along.

We live with privileges the multitudes never had: the whole of Scripture in our hands, and the Holy Spirit as a private Tutor who will “teach you all things” and “guide you into all truth” (John 14:26; John 16:13). But Pastor Baldwin presses the uncomfortable question home: are we willing to learn? Our blindness, he says, is more often a failure of interest than of intellect — the Laodicean failure. Jesus laid down the rule: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine” (John 7:17). We understand truth as we surrender to live it — the way Pastor Quinton Smith, studying the Sabbath question for himself, surrendered his own pulpit rather than keep tradition over Scripture. The sermon closes with the only question the parables ever really ask: will you give your heart to Him today, and let His Spirit teach you?

*Key texts:* Matthew 13:34–35; Psalm 78:1–2; Matthew 13:10–17; John 14:26; John 16:12–13; John 7:17 · *Also referenced:* Ellen G. White, *Christ’s Object Lessons*, on Christ’s desire to awaken inquiry

*Watch:* https://youtu.be/a2OWYVl124M · *Listen:* https://cloud-1de12d.becdn.net/media/original/743633476e4f9a740999cf434a244d3e.mp3