Parables of Jesus: Complete Teachings from The Urantia Book - Hardcover

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The parables of Jesus are not so much famous as they are familiar as sayings and metaphors. The good Samaritan is part of the lexicon, but how many people know the details of his story? The same might be said for lost sons or for good shepherds and their lost sheep. Talents are bought and sold for great sums, but did you know that the story of the lord who entrusted talents to his servants to invest while he was away is where we derive the meaning of the word?

Yet these simple stories run deep and have inspired and instructed countless souls in the two thousand years since they were first recorded. The Master made the parable the cornerstone of his public teaching especially during the last year of his earthly ministry; and while this method of teaching was not wholly new to Jesus, it became almost a new method of teaching as he employed it. The parable possesses these valuable benefits:

• It appeals to different levels of mind and spirit by stimulating the imagination and encouraging critical thinking; it promotes understanding without arousing resentment.
• It proceeds from things which are known to things unknown; the material and natural introduce the spiritual and the supernatural.
• Parables favor the making of impartial moral decisions. The parable evades much prejudice and puts new truth gracefully into the mind and does all this with the arousal of a minimum of the self-defense of personal resentment.
• To reject the truth contained in parabolical analogy requires conscious intellectual action which is directly in contempt of one’s honest judgment and fair decision. The parable conduces to the forcing of thought through the sense of hearing.
• The use of the parable form of teaching enables the teacher to present new and even startling truths while at the same time he largely avoids all controversy and outward clashing with tradition and established authority.
• The parable also possesses the advantage of stimulating the memory of the truth taught when the same familiar scenes are subsequently encountered.

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The apostles and those who were with them, when they heard Jesus teach the people in this manner, were greatly perplexed; and after much talking among themselves, that evening in the Zebedee garden Matthew said to Jesus: “Master, what is the meaning of the dark sayings which you present to the multitude? Why do you speak in parables to those who seek the truth?” And Jesus answered:

“In patience have I instructed you all this time. To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to the undiscerning multitudes and to those who seek our destruction, from now on, the mysteries of the kingdom shall be presented in parables. And this we will do so that those who really desire to enter the kingdom may discern the meaning of the teaching and thus find salvation, while those who listen only to ensnare us may be the more confounded in that they will see without seeing and will hear without hearing. My children, do you not perceive the law of the spirit which decrees that to him who has shall be given so that he shall have an abundance; but from him who has not shall be taken away even that which he has. Therefore will I henceforth speak to the people much in parables to the end that our friends and those who desire to know the truth may find that which they seek, while our enemies and those who love not the truth may hear without understanding. Many of these people follow not in the way of the truth. The prophet did, indeed, describe all such undiscerning souls when he said: ‘For this people’s heart has waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed lest they should discern the truth and understand it in their hearts.’”

Toward the close of the evening’s lesson Jesus made his first comment on the parable of the sower. He said the parable referred to two things: First, it was a review of his own ministry up to that time and a forecast of what lay ahead of him for the remainder of his life on earth. And second, it was also a hint as to what the apostles and other messengers of the kingdom might expect in their ministry from generation to generation as time passed.

Before he dismissed the group for the night, Jesus said: “Now will I tell you the last of the parable of the sower. I would test you to know how you will receive this: The kingdom of heaven is also like a man who cast good seed upon the earth; and while he slept by night and went about his business by day, the seed sprang up and grew, and although he knew not how it came about, the plant came to fruit. First there was the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And then when the grain was ripe, he put forth the sickle, and the harvest was finished. He who has an ear to hear, let him hear.”