He's a master storyteller when you look at the parables and how he taught.

And so he does use illustrations, including parables, as a way of drawing people in.

He uses the word listen or he has ears, these sort of things, I think, related to parables,

because he actually wants people to listen to them.

They give us these word picture

summaries of the kingdom of God. They're about Jesus and some ways. He's the king and his kingdom,

his rule of mercy and righteousness. They're going to teach us something about the nature of the

kingdom and the nature of the king. Doug O'Donnell is the senior vice president of Bible King.

Doug O'Donnell is the senior vice president of Bible editorial at Crossway and is a member of the ESV Translation Oversight Committee. He's also the author of a number of books, including The

Parables of Jesus, a 12-week study, which is part of Crossways's Knowing the Bible study series.

Doug, thanks so much for joining me today on the Crossway podcast.

It's great to be with you again, Matt.

So today we're going to talk about some of the parables of Jesus, these really interesting,

sometimes confusing stories that we find in the Gospels.

But maybe to start us off, I wonder if you can just first

give us a brief, understandable definition of a parable. What is a parable? Yeah, a parable. The word

parable in Greek is made up of two different words. So the preposition parra, which means beside,

and balo, which means to cast or to throw. So literally, like, to toss next to,

is how you could translate or place alongside. So a parable, by that, just etymology, it's making a

comparison, one thing to another. God is like a longing, loving father who forgives and embraces a prodigal son

who's returned home. The growth of the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. So sometimes it's a

story. Sometimes it's just a saying that can be classified as a parable. I think we'll mostly talk about

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