3. By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!
4. Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?
5. By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”
6. And he told them this parable: “There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none,
7. he said to the gardener, ‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. [So] cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?’
8. He said to him in reply, ‘Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it;
9. it may bear fruit in the future. If not you can cut it down.’”
10. He was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath.
11. And a woman was there who for eighteen years had been crippled by a spirit; she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect.
12. When Jesus saw her, he called to her and said, “Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.”
13. He laid his hands on her, and she at once stood up straight and glorified God.
14. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant that Jesus had cured on the sabbath, said to the crowd in reply, “There are six days when work should be done. Come on those days to be cured, not on the sabbath day.”
15. The Lord said to him in reply, “Hypocrites! Does not each one of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger and lead it out for watering?
16. This daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now, ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day from this bondage?”
17. When he said this, all his adversaries were humiliated; and the whole crowd rejoiced at all the splendid deeds done by him.
18. Then he said, “What is the kingdom of God like? To what can I compare it?
19. It is like a mustard seed that a person took and planted in the garden. When it was fully grown, it became a large bush and ‘the birds of the sky dwelt in its branches.’”
20. Again he said, “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God?