This morning we come to the third and fourth parables of Jesus’ kingdom parables in Matt. 13:31-33. I began this mini-series on the parables of the kingdom by explaining a bit of background that becomes important again today. Remember that Jesus is preaching this sermon after the events of chapter 12, in which he is rejected numerous times by the religious leaders and even his own family. As we saw from verse 10, his disciples are fairly put off with him that he isn’t being clear. They likely don’t understand why he doesn’t just come right out and say that he’s the Messiah. But, in these parables, Jesus is doing the work of explaining to his disciples that their view of the kingdom is flawed. You see, they had the idea that the Messiah would come and usher in this golden age of military might and legal reform and religious revival. They had the idea that it would be a constant flow of victory after victory, glory upon glory. But, it's not. Instead of legal reform, the Pharisees have harangued them over minutia about the Sabbath. Instead of religious revival, the leaders of Israel accused Jesus of having a demon. Instead of a great rise to military power, Jesus curses this generation of his people for their hard-heartedness.
The disciples needed to understand that the kingdom of God would not begin with all of these triumphs. Instead, it would look like a farmer planting a field, where there are some successes and some rejections. It would look like that same farmer being patient with weeds while his true seed grows, just as we are to be patient with unbelievers until the time of judgment comes. Now we come to two parables that explain the way the kingdom will grow. To see that, let’s read Matt. 13:31-33. From this passage I want you to see two points: the size of the seed and the spread of the kingdom.
First, consider the size of the seed. Both of these parables start with something seemingly insignificant. In the first parable, Jesus says that the kingdom of God is like a grain of mustard seed, and in the second, he says that it is like leaven that a woman folds into flour. A mustard seed, as Jesus points out, is the smallest of the domesticated plants of the middle east. Jesus is borrowing from a common tradition of the Jews that used this seed as a measure for the smallness of something. For example, Jewish Rabbis, in answering the question of how much blood is enough to defile a person, would say that a drop of blood the size of a mustard seed is enough. So, not only would a farmer have understood what Jesus meant, but the religious leaders would have, too.
In the second parable, Jesus speaks of another insignificant item – leaven or yeast. I’ve told some of you before that I love to make bread. The whole process is therapeutic to me, but especially one important part. You see, a big, beautiful loaf of bread starts very simply with flour, water, oil, salt, maybe a little sugar, and yeast. Yeast is a fungus that breaks down the gluten in the wheat and releases CO2, which in turn makes the bread rise. You can add just a teaspoon of yeast to two cups of flour, and within the course of two hours, that mixture will double in size. And, then you get to do the most therapeutic thing – you take that big lump of dough, and you punch it! Then you knead it as hard as you can until it reaches the texture you want. It’s so satisfying. But it all starts with a small portion of a microscopic organism that works to make delicious food that will benefit your whole family.
So, what does this have to do with the kingdom of God? With both the mustard seed and the yeast, Jesus is pointing to the fact that the kingdom of God starts in an insignificant way. This is true in two ways. First, it’s true historically. The kingdom of God started, not in the royal palace in Jerusalem, but in a stable in Bethlehem. It was delivered, not through a king and his queen, but through a carpenter and his young, virgin wife. It was announced, not to the rulers of Israel, but to shepherds. The word was first spread, not by royal heralds, but by foreign pagans called Magi. The kingdom of God grew, not in the halls of elite rabbinical schools, but on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, among fishermen and merchants. Its impact was first felt, not by the elites, but by the lepers, demon-possessed, and sinners. Even after Jesus’ resurrection, he would ascend and leave around 120 people as the inaugural citizens of this kingdom.
Second, the insignificant start of the kingdom of God is true wherever and whenever it is preached. 1 Cor. 1:21 says, “It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe.” Understand what Paul means: God, in his infinite, sovereign wisdom, chose to reach the world for his kingdom, not through military might or through technological advancement or through mystical allurement, but through the foolishness of what I am doing right now. Have you ever thought about how foolish it looks to the lost world that you come, week in and week out, to listen to me speak for 30 minutes about a passage from a book that was written 2000 years ago? Have you thought how crazy it is to the unsaved mind, that when we are asked to explain what we believe, we open this ancient book and begin to tell about a man who lived two millennia ago? It is foolish! It is small! It is seemingly insignificant. And yet, by God’s power alone, it works. People all over this world, every day, hear about Jesus through the witness of faithful believers proclaiming the gospel, and they believe and trust in Christ. Understand that it is not the sleekness of the presentation or the persuasiveness of the presenter that saves people. It is the power of the Gospel and the work of the Spirit that does that. We do not need fog machines and live streams to change hearts! We need the small, insignificant seed of the Gospel. That’s all!
So now that we understand the size of the seed, let’s consider the spread of the kingdom. In these two parables, Jesus emphasizes the expanding benefit of the kingdom from a small, insignificant start. With the parable of the mustard seed, the plant grows to a large bush, large enough that the birds can make their nests (literally, “build a home”). Mustard plants typically grow in bush form to be about 7 to 8 feet tall. But, on occasion, they can grow as tall as 15 feet tall. And, during certain times of the year, their branches become woody and the birds do in fact use them for nesting. There are two aspects of the spread of the kingdom that Jesus has in view here. First, the spread of the kingdom is expansive. Certainly, if you were to plant a mustard seed out in the woods, compared to other trees of the forest, it would not be all that impressive. But, if you plant it in your vegetable garden and it grows to be 15 feet tall, it could very well shade your whole garden. We see this same idea of expansion in the parable of the yeast. When the yeast does its work, it expands into the whole loaf. This points to the fact that the kingdom of God will expand into all the earth. God’s kingdom is meant for all people. It may have started small with the preaching of the Gospel in Jerusalem, but then it exploded to spread to Judea, then Samaria, then Africa and Asia Minor and Rome and Britain and France and India and China and Russia and the Americas. The kingdom of God starts from the tiny seed of the Gospel that is preached in this church and churches like us, but it doesn’t fizzle out there. It leaves with all of you to go out into this world and expands into your families, your schools, your businesses, your friendships, to the uttermost parts of the earth.
Second, the spread of the kingdom is all-encompassing. As some of you know, I’m a outdoorsman and conservationist – I love nature. I love to camp, fish, hunt, kayak, swim, whatever I can do to be outside. And, I have an affinity for birds (especially the ones I can hunt). So, this phrase, “even the birds make their nest” sticks out to me. It also sticks out to me because this is an important theme in Scripture. Psalm 84:3 says, “Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young at your altars, O Lord of hosts.” The Psalmist, in considering the temple of God, marvels that the temple even benefits the smallest of creatures – the little swallow that builds a nest on its capitals. I take from this that God’s kingdom benefits all of creation, even the least. I would argue, that with some unfortunate exceptions, wherever Christianity has spread, life is preserved, humanity flourishes, and the world is made more beautiful. In ancient Rome, it was a typical practice that unwanted infants would be left on the side of the street to die of exposure. Christian widows took to adopting and raising these children, even creating the first orphanages. When British missionaries came to India, they found a horrid practice there in which the wives of men who died would be burned on the funeral pier with their husbands. The missionaries worked to put an end to this practice, and even though, today, India is a mostly Hindu nation, it has never gone back to that practice. As the kingdom of God expands, its goodness benefits all of humanity.
So, may we leave this place and take this seed of the Gospel to the world. And, may we take the goodness of the kingdom with us and seek to be life-giving, beautifying, truth-telling children of God.
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