If there’s one thing Jesus talked about more than anything else, it’s something called the “Kingdom of Heaven.”

It’s his way of talking about life under God’s reign, the kind of life Jesus lived, died, and rose again to make available to us. When he explained it, though, he didn’t make a list of points or try to draw it on a whiteboard. Instead he told short stories or parables. He used the stuff of earth—seeds, weeds, bread, pearls, treasures and fishing nets—to explain what life in the Kingdom of Heaven is like. In this series, we’re going to unpack five short parables about life in the kingdom of heaven from Matthew 13.