Amen. Everybody church, doing all right. You're looking good. If you got your Bibles, I hope you do, grab them. We're going to be in Matthew Chapter 13. If you don't have a Bible of your own, there's one in the seat back in front of you. Grab that. And if you don't own one, you can take that home with you. It is our gift to you. If you have about eight of our gifts, we would look for you to bring about seven of them back and just keep the one gifts. That would be awesome. All right. Matthew chapter 13. If you were brand new to church or maybe you started last week and now you're back this week and this is the first time you've been

to church two times in a row in your life. Welcome. You have come on really the best week you could

because we're starting a brand new series over the next few months will be in this series

that we're calling the storyteller because that is a part of what Jesus did he told stories

or he preached sermons that's not the primary thing that he did primarily he came to seek and save the

loss he died on the cross for sinners he's our savior and our sovereign king but if he was going to save our sovereign king. But if he was going to save us

from something and to something, he preached sermons so that we would know what he was saying

of us from our sin and what he was saving us to a relationship with Jesus. And so what he would do

is he'd preach like crazy. And the Bible says in Matthew 1334 this it says all these things

Jesus said to the crowds in parables indeed he said nothing to them without a parable and a parable is really

just a story with a point the Greek it's really from two different Greek words that means to cast

alongside of that's what it means.

And so he would take a concept that would be difficult to understand, like the kingdom of God,

kind of a new concept to people, and he would cast it alongside a concept that would be easy to understand something that they would be into, like farming or fishing or being a good neighbor or that kind of thing.

It would be similar to what I do every single week. I am a storyteller. That's why you'll hear

here often. I'll say it reminds me of a story. Anybody a parent? Or it's like if you had two dogs

and they wound up in the pound, what would it look like to redeem them back, or that kind of thing.

I think if Jesus was teaching today, he would start out a whole lot of sermons this way.

Have you seen the movie?

And then he would say, it's sort of like that, because you understand that.

Let me lay something aside that it's about the kingdom of God that maybe you'll understand.

And so the reason that we're going to study Matthew chapter 13 is because it's the first

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