Frank,

I am glad that you asked me the question: Which parables are for Christians? I'm not going to get into detail about each parable and its meaning.  This is mainly because I frankly do not fully understand some of the details of the parables.  There are disagreements among believers as to what the meanings of the parables are.  I believe that Christians can understand them, and perhaps some do.  But I believe that most don't.  And in misunderstanding them, the parables are given an incorrect application.  And not only the parables, but a lot of what Jesus said.

Of course, the best Person to go to for understanding of things Scriptural is the Holy Spirit.  Most people who claim to know what Biblical things mean also claim to have Holy Spirit-enlightened insight.  But can everyone who has an opinion on a meaning of something be correct and enlightened if there are disagreements among them?  Of course not!  So what do we do?  Most of us simply agree to disagree, and denominations are formed according to the various interpretations of the Scriptures.  And each denomination likewise claims that they are God's favorite because they understand and serve Him correctly.

If I had time to do some very in depth studying of the parables, I would of course pray for the enlightening of the Holy Spirit first of all.  I then would go to who I think would be the next best source of undertanding....an orthodox Jewish Rabbi.  Why?  Because I believe the parables were written to the Hebrew people. 

Try to consider this objectively.  First of all, those who decided what the content of the Bible would be in its present form I believe placed the dividing point of the Old and New Testaments in the wrong place.  The correct place would be at the very point that Jesus died on the cross.  Under the Old Law, all people, including Jesus who lived under the Old Covenant. must die a physical death.   And once Jesus succombed to the Old Law by dying, He then initiated the New Testament by being resurrected.  And all the O.T. saints who dutifully performed the required sacrifices which anticipated the ultimate sacrifice, although they had to physically die first, will be able to partake of the New Covenant:  resurrection and eternal life.

So if the Old and New Testaments were divided in the correct place, then it would be much easier to understand who the parables were written to and about.  Those who claim that the parables were written to and about the Church are taking them out of their historical context.  Jesus was living during the Old Testament, and anything written in the Gospels about events prior to His death need to be understood in the Old Testament context.  When Jesus was speaking the parables, the Church did not exist, nor did the disciples know anything about the Church.  Their mindset was formed by the Hebrew teachings and beliefs from their ancestry.  And so their understanding of the meaning of the parables had to come from prior Hebrew thought. 

I don't believe that the Church was taught in the Old Testament world.  Old Testament believers were promised resurrection and eternal life through the sacrificial system, but they knew nothing of the Church.  Nor did the disciples.  And Jesus' mission wasn't to explain the Church to them.  His mission, rather, was to explain the Kingdom of Heaven to them.  That's why He began the 2 parables of Matt. 25 with the phrase "The Kingdom of Heaven shall be likened to" (v. 1, 14)  The church is not the Kingdom of Heaven, although it is part of it.  The Kingdom of Heaven is when the King comes to Earth to reign...."Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven."  So these parables are about certain circumstances relating to the Kingdom of Heaven as it transpires on Earth. 

Jesus was speaking to Jewish disciples, who He expected would understand the parables because the disciples had been brought up according to these types of Hebrew teachings.  Did Jesus make up these parables, or were they ones that had been taught throughout ancient Hebrew history?  No one knows.  It doesn't really matter.  The thing to note is the fact that He came to minister to the Jews and teach the Jews.....not about the Church, but about the promises made in the Old Testament concerning the coming Kingdom of Heaven and the Jews role in it.  Yes, these disciples are part of the Church, but they became part of the Church after Jesus presented the parables to them.  Bofore Pentecost, they were simply Jesus' disciples, i.e. Jews who happened to follow Him.  And Jesus told the parables to them as Jews, not as Holy Spirit-filled Christians.  And the parables weren't meant for just those 12 Jews.  They were meant to inform all Jews and all people.  Its just that to understand the meaning of them, one must consider to whom Jesus was speaking, and the historical context in which He spoke.  And not only the parables, but everything that Jesus talkes about.