Sowers and reapers, mustard seeds and leaven, treasures and pearls—these are some of the symbols Jesus Christ used as He taught in parables. “Who hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 13:9, 43), the Savior invited. This lesson will give you opportunities to study parables, to discover their spiritual meaning, and to look for ways to act on what you learn.
Interpreting and applying parables. As students study the parables of Jesus, remember that in addition to understanding their meaning in their original context, it is essential to seek revelation from the Holy Ghost to help us interpret and apply the parables for our own lives.
Student preparation: Invite students to assess their ability to understand the Lord’s parables. Students could read Matthew 13:44–48 and rate their confidence in their ability to draw spiritual lessons from these short parables.
Possible Learning Activities
Looking for meaning
Consider showing students an image that has hidden items in it. Invite students to find the items and discuss what effort they needed to make to find them.
Take a moment to look for hidden items in the following image.
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A picture with hidden objects in it.
Which items were easy for you to find? Which ones required more effort?
Like finding items in this picture, finding meaning in the scriptures often requires us to learn how to search and study them. When we invite the Holy Ghost to help us study what we read, we can find additional meaning that at first may be hidden.
When have you found meaning in the scriptures that at first may have been hidden to you?
What has helped you be successful in finding spiritual lessons or meaning from the scriptures?
This could be a good place in the lesson to invite students to report on their preparation for class.
In this lesson, you will have the opportunity to practice searching for deeper meaning in the scriptures, specifically the Lord’s parables. Try to discover and implement new ways to help you to study the scriptures.
Jesus Christ taught using parables
Jesus Christ often taught by using simple stories known as parables. In these parables, Jesus compared familiar objects or situations to spiritual truths (see Guide to the Scriptures, “Parable,” scriptures.ChurchofJesusChrist.org). Jesus’s disciples once asked Him why He taught in parables (see Matthew 13:10).
Read Matthew 13:11–13, 16, looking for why the Savior said he taught in parables.
What did these verses help you understand about why the Savior taught in parables?
Why do you think some people see, hear, and understand the Lord’s messages and others do not?
Later lessons will address some longer parables, like the parable of the sower and the parable of the wheat and the tares.
The following process can help you better understand the Savior’s parables and learn important spiritual lessons from them. Record these steps in your study journal.
Find important details.
Make spiritual comparisons.
Discover valuable lessons.
Determine personal application.
Practice each of these steps while looking at a short parable.
The following is an example of using these four steps while studying Matthew 13:44. Feel free to use this example or others to help students learn how to find lessons and application from parables in ways that will help them most.
Find important details
Practice the first step in this process by reading Matthew 13:44 and looking for important details. These details could include people, places, objects, actions, or events. You might want to mark what you discover in your scriptures.
What important details did you find?
Details you may have noticed include the treasure, the man who found it, and the fact that he sold all he had to claim it.
Make spiritual comparisons
Making spiritual comparisons might happen naturally as you discover important details, but it could also require more effort. Don’t be afraid to ponder details and look for clues, using scripture helps available to you.
Consider showing a few common objects that students could use to practice making spiritual comparisons, as described in the following paragraph.
To practice this skill, take a moment to compare some things that are physical to things that are spiritual. For example, you might compare an eraser with the doctrine of repentance.
What comparisons did you think of?
In the parable in Matthew 13:44, the Savior helped us make at least one connection when He said, “the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure” (Matthew 13:44).
What spiritual comparisons could you make using the other details of this parable?
Discover valuable lessons
To discover valuable lessons, it can be helpful to ask questions about the details you noticed and spiritual comparisons you made.
If we know that “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the kingdom of God on the earth” (Guide to the Scriptures, “Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven,” scriptures.ChurchofJesusChrist.org), then what lessons might the Savior want us to understand from His parable?
One lesson we might learn from this parable is that when we have found the Savior’s Church and recognize its value, we should joyfully give up all other things to receive the blessings of being part of God’s kingdom. Consider recording the valuable lessons you learn in your Notes on ChurchofJesusChrist.org or in your scriptures.
Determine personal application
Determine personal application by asking yourself what you need to do in your own life to apply the lessons you discovered.
Among many ways to apply this truth, we might consider committing to serve more faithfully in a Church calling or giving up things in our life that are preventing us from fully enjoying the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
How did following this study pattern help you find meaning in this short parable?
Encourage students to put forth effort and to not get discouraged if understanding parables is difficult for them.
Choose one of the following scripture references, and follow each of the four steps described above. (When you finish, you could try one or more of the other references.)
What did you discover as you studied the parable using the four steps?
What do you think we can learn about the Savior through His choice to use parables to teach valuable lessons?
Commentary and Background Information
Why did Jesus Christ teach using parables?
“The parable conveys to the hearer religious truth exactly in proportion to his faith and intelligence; to the dull and uninspired it is a mere story, ‘seeing they see not,’ while to the instructed and spiritual it reveals the mysteries or secrets of the kingdom of heaven. Thus it is that the parable exhibits the condition of all true knowledge. Only he who seeks finds” (Bible Dictionary, “ Parables ”).
Why is it important to seek for meaning in parables and in our experiences?
Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught:
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Elder David A. Bednar
Each of us should look for the lessons and warnings found in the simple events of everyday life. As we seek for a mind and heart open to receive heavenly direction by the power of the Holy Ghost, then some of the greatest instructions that we can receive and many of the most powerful warnings that can safeguard us will originate in our own ordinary experiences. Powerful parables are contained in both the scriptures and in our daily lives.
What do the parables from Matthew 13 teach us about the latter days?
The Prophet Joseph Smith (1805–44) taught that the Savior’s parables in Matthew 13 help us understand the gathering of people into the Church during New Testament times and also in the latter days: “The sayings of the Savior, recorded in the 13th chapter of His Gospel according to St. Matthew, … in my mind, afford us as clear an understanding upon the important subject of the gathering as anything recorded in the Bible” (”To the Elders of the Church of the Latter Day Saints,” Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate, Dec. 1835, 2:225; spelling, capitalization, and punctuation modernized).
For more of Joseph Smith’s teachings about how the parables in Matthew 13 relate to the latter-day gathering, see the chart found in “Chapter 5: Matthew 13–15” in New Testament Student Manual (2018).
Supplemental Learning Activity
Using modern stories or parables
To help students see the value of searching the scriptures and parables for important lessons, consider introducing modern-day examples like the following:
In his message “Watchful unto Prayer Continually” (Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2019, 31–35), Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles shared an experience he and Sister Bednar had in Africa while observing wildlife. Consider showing the video “Watchful unto Prayer Continually” (15:59), available on ChurchofJesusChrist.org, from time code 2:13 to 5:14.