In Mark 4, Jesus has such a large crowd gathered that He has to teach from a boat, and Jesus does something strange. He doesn’t just start sharing propositional truth about Himself; He has a captive audience of thousands and He chooses to tell a story, a parable. A parable was a certain kind of teaching that placed an earthly story alongside of a heavenly meaning. Parables are the most striking feature of the teaching of Jesus; He used them more, and in a different way, than anyone else before His time or since. Jesus uses parables as a sort of spiritual test of heart for whether people want to hear His message about the kingdom of God and what that means. The test wasn’t whether they were wise enough or clever enough to pull that heavenly meaning from the story, but rather: would their lack of understanding make them curious and drive them to Jesus to know the meaning, or would the story just further harden their hearts and make them walk away? Jesus uses parables as a sign of judgement for those who are not interested in Him and as a sign of hope for those who are.
