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An Influential Teacher Jesus tried to show people how important it was to follow God’s teachings. He asked people to accept God into their lives. He taught using captivating stories that had layers of meaning, called parables . A parable can be simply enjoyed and remembered as a good story, easily memorized for

Teaching With Parables

P arables were a form of teaching used by the Jews of Jesus’s time. Jewish rabbis, or spiritual leaders, used stories from everyday life to entertain and teach. The following is one of Jesus’s parables: “The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field. As a seed, mustard is smaller than any other; but when it has grown, it is bigger than any garden-plant; it becomes a tree, big enough for birds to come and roost among its branches.” Some people interpret the parable to be about the growth of Christianity. Jesus is the man who sowed the seed in his field. Mustard seeds are very small, but they produce large plants that grow quickly and soon take over most of the field. The Christian church that Jesus established also started out small, but grew relatively quick- ly. Today, Christianity is the world’s largest religion with more than 2.2 billion followers.

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Christianity