The Mustard Seed

You can say to this mountain, move here and go there and it will be done. So it is with the gospel seed. It falls in different places on different hearts. But the gospel seed is very small. It seems just a little conversation with a friend, just a little witnessing moment. It is very very small. We're in this parable uh of this mustard seed this morning as we go through this series, the parables of Jesus. And I invite you to take your Bible and open it to Matthew chapter 13, just two verses, uh verse 31 and 32. Let's read it together. He he told them another parable. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, it is yet when it is grown, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches. uh as we've been going through these parables of Jesus and I've been uh listening online and attending some of our locations, I I've noticed that this is the first parable that we have studied in this series that does not have an explainer. Let me explain the other parables that you've studied thus far. Jesus tells a parable. He goes away from it for a little bit and then he comes back and gives this rather lengthy explainer or explanation of what the parable actually meant. But not this parable. It is two verses with no explainer. Now, I'm just saying that seems to be much easier preaching, preaching a parable in which Jesus provides all of the commentary for a parable with just two verses and no explainer. I I I I'm wondering who assigned me this passage, and it just seems like more difficult preaching. But that's okay. Leave it to the old-timer. I've got this. And it is also one of the shortest parables that Jesus shared. It is short, succinct, small, and did I mention with no explainer? Now, I'm fine with short. I've been short all my life. All right? I am good with short. And I'm also good with short sermons, short books, short movies, short car rides, short plane rides. You get the beef. I'm also fine with a short parable. Uh I remember several years ago a very popular book written by Tom Rener came out called Simple Church and it was 250 pages. And I thought if it's that simple it shouldn't be 250 pages. It should be like a pamphlet, right? If it's simple it should be short. This parable of the mustard seed is more of a witty comment, a short proverb. So, in the honor of the brevity of this parable, and preaching it as it is written, I'm going to spend the next 40 to 45 minutes explaining to you these two verses in this parable. What took Jesus 40 seconds to share, I'm going to make 40 minutes. All right, so let's jump in. The first thing you see in this parable is the reality of the kingdom. Verse 31 says, "The kingdom of heaven is like," and then he goes on. But don't miss those first few words, "The kingdom of heaven is like." It's one of the things that Jesus taught us to pray. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Wouldn't that be great? On earth as it is in heaven. Wouldn't it Wouldn't you love to have heaven in your home? Wouldn't you love to have a heaven-filled workplace or a heaven-filled community? A certainly a heaven-filled church. his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Well, for that to happen, I don't want you to miss this key thought. If you're going to have heaven in your home, in your workplace, in your community, and most importantly in your church, and in your heart, this key thought applies. To have a kingdom, you have to first have a king. Amen. We sung wonderfully about that during our worship service. The Bible speaks often about that throughout the Old and the New Testament. In Daniel chapter 7 on the screen here, it says, "I continued watching in the night visions and suddenly one like a son of man was coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the ancient of days was escorted before him. He was given dominion and glory and a kingdom so that those of every people, nation, and language should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away and his kingdom will be that will not be destroyed. Can you say amen to that? Uh the Bible says in I believe in Ephesians it says uh he exercised this power in Christ by raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens far above every ruler and authority, power and dominion and every title given not only in this age but also in the one to come. Can you say amen to that verse? Uh the Bible says later in first Timothy or second Timothy it says in the presence of God who gives life to all and of Christ Jesus who gave a good confession before Ponteus Pilate I charge you to keep this command without fault or failure until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. God will bring this about in his own time. He is the blessed and only sovereign. Say it with me. the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. And then we find later in the New Testament in Hebrews, I believe, the Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After making purification for sins, get this, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. So he became superior to the angels just as the name he inherited is more excellent than theirs. He is the king. Amen. >> And in order to have a kingdom, you must first have a king. Much has been said recently about no kings the last few years and months. Maybe you've seen signs like this one behind me uh on your news fe or maybe even in person as I have as I've drove around the streets of our city. And while that may be true about local powers and authorities, it is not true when it comes to the kingdom of heaven. The truth is is that you desperately need to know King Jesus. Let me ask you, have you ever personally surrendered to Jesus as your king? Have you ever bowed your head and bend your knee and surrendered your life to him as the King of Kings, as the sovereign of your life as the Lord of Lords, not know Kings? The key is we need to know the King of glory. Now when it comes to any discussion about the kingdom, there are always several interesting questions. I wrote a paper about this way back in seminary. Uh the questions are these. Is the kingdom of heaven now or then? The answer is yes. Is the kingdom visible or invisible? The answer is yes. Is the kingdom external or internal? The answer is yes. It is now. Jesus came now and set up his kingdom. It is also then. There is a coming day when his kingdom will be established for all of eternity. Uh is the kingdom visible? Yes. One day the whole earth will witness it. But it is also invisible in your life. Is it external? Yes, read revelation. But it is also internal. God wants to set up his rule and reign inside your life. So when I ask you the question, have you surrendered to Jesus as your personal king? That is a now question. That is an invisible question. That is an internal question. But make no mistake, one day, either by compulsion then or now willingly, all people, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is king of this world. >> And so there is the reality of his kingdom. And to have a kingdom, you have to have a king. Secondly, we see in this short little parable the recipe for his kingdom. In verses 31 and following, it says, "The kingdom of heaven is here's what it's like. It's like a mustard seed, though it is the smallest of your seeds." Now, if any of you uh follow me on Facebook or social media, you know that I am sort of a master gardener. I have three prolific raised garden beds in my backyard that produce the most succulent vegetables that you can imagine. Often I am found being guilty of bragging on that just a little bit by placing pictures of my rich red tomatoes or my red hot peppers on Facebook. I will also say confession is good for the soul. Sometimes I just go to Safeway to the produce department and take some pictures and post them as if they were my own. That works too in in in droughts and seasons of bad gardening. But because I'm a master gardener, they've asked me to come in here this morning and give you some truths about seeds. Here's the truth. First truth about a mustard seed. It is small. Jesus said it is the smallest of seeds. And of course, that was exactly correct. When a man went out to sew mustard seed, he didn't reach in his basket and get a handful. He used his finger and his thumb and he got a little tiny seed and planted it in the ground. Rabbis in those days would use the terminology as small as a mustard seed to refer to something that was extremely small, very minute. Jesus used this figure of speech often in Matthew 17:20. He says that if you have the faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, "Move here and go there and it will be done." So it is with the gospel seed. And we've spent several weeks studying in these parables around the theme of this seed distribution and how it falls in different places on different hearts. But the gospel seed is very small. It seems just a little conversation with a friend, just a little witnessing moment. It is very very small. It is also significant. Uh the gospel seed may be small but it is s significant because of what it produces. Jesus said is the least of all the seeds but it is great when it is grown and it becomes the greatest among all the plants. You never know what one little seed of the gospel will do in a person's life. what one little conversation, what one little minuscule, seemingly minuscule verse of scripture can do in a person's heart. Uh Charles Haden Spurgeon is probably the most quoted preacher ever. As a matter of fact, in a group of preachers, if you want to sound smart, you quote Spurgeon. It's like it's almost in some groups more impressive than quoting Jesus. All right. Spurgeon preached to thousands. He couldn't build a church big enough to hold the people that came to hear him preach. He was going through a remodeling of his church and expanding the worship center. And by the time it was finished, it was too small and they had to build a build a bigger one. Spurgeon would have services on Sunday night. Get this. And he would ask his church members not to come so that others that did not know Christ would come and be able to hear the gospel. Spurgeon was seeker sensitive long before that word became popular in the 80s and 90s. And as a matter of fact, it got to the point that he would have to ask people to get a ticket in order to reserve a spot for church on a Sunday night. And yet Spurgeon's conversion story is an amazing one. He he was a young man and he was going off to the church that he was attending at the time and there was a vicious snowstorm in his city and he couldn't make it all the way to that church. So he ducked into a little Methodist chapel on the way. And it was there in that Methodist chapel that he didn't hear the preacher of the chapel preach because he couldn't make it due to the snowstorm that a layman stood up and he just read one verse and that was the sermon. I could have made 50 minutes out of that if I'd been there. But he just read one verse and this was the sermon. But the one verse was, "Look unto me and be ye saved." And Charles Haden Spurgeon, the greatest perhaps of all the preachers, that one little small mustard seed of the gospel took root in his heart and it changed his lives and thousands and thousands of others to follow. A mustard seed is small. A mustard seed is significant. But we also must confess that a mustard seed is strong. There is a particular quality about a mustard seed that is nothing to the ordinary. There is strength. There is bite. There is fire. There is pugnancy to a mustard seed. It can be irritating and it can have a disturbing quality. Some of you that have been around here a little bit know that I grew up in a very small town in Oklahoma. Somebody told me uh before service that they're driving through Oklahoma uh this coming week and I said, "I'm sorry." Uh I I hate that for you. I'm going to Destin. Um but I grew up in this very small town, population 400. I remember distinctly the day that our church here became twice as large as the town I grew up in. And we had two restaurants in that town. We had the Big Blue, which is a little burger shop right across from the high school. And man, if you saved up enough money once a week, you could slip across for lunch at the Big Blue. And then we had the Beacon Cafe that was attached to the local gas station that my aunt and uncle owned and operated. What we did not have in my small town of population 400 was any Chinese restaurants. And I remember the first time I had Chinese food. I was at my wife's home. her sister, who was a big city girl, had gone to the town about 30 minutes away and bought Chinese food. And she brought it home and we unpacked it. And there was all the condiments that you associate with Chinese food. One of which was the hot mustard. Well, I got an egg roll. It looked kind of like a corn dog. And I like my corn dog with a lot of yellow mustard on it. So I dipped that bad boy into the mustard. I thought it was just mustard. They didn't say hot mustard at the time. That is just mustard. And I dipped that in there. Woo. As Jerry Clower would have said back in the day. I mean, my goodness, it set me on fire. I didn't eat Chinese food for another decade. Well, a mustard seed has an irritating, disturbing factor about it. That is exactly true of the gospel message. There is something exciting, agitating, and disturbing about the gospel. It is no mildmannered message preached by mildmannered preachers to mildmannered people urging them to go out and be more mildmannered. The gospel mustard seed should set a church on fire as much as hot Chinese mustard does to your mouth. It should ignite us and excite us to go and share this message with everybody and anybody we can. That's the recipe of the kingdom. And then finally, the results of the kingdom. The Bible says in verse 32, when it grows is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches. Let me give you this key thought. There is an everexpanding effect of the kingdom of heaven in our world and in our lives. Uh first of all, there is an everexpanding effect in our world. You think about Jesus came into this world in a small unassuming way. Born in a Bethlehem stable much like a small mustard seed. He was born on in in a borrowed stable. He preached his first sermon on the back of a borrowed boat. And when he died, he was laid to rest in a borrowed tomb. It is true, the son of man had nowhere to lay his head. And yet the work of Jesus in this world started small will end big. Revelation tells us the end of the story in Revelation 5-7. Here's what it says. And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth, to him who loves us and has set us free from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom priest to his God and father. To him be glory, dominion forever and ever. Amen. It goes on, look, he is coming in the clouds, and every eye will see him, and even those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him. So it is to be. Amen. >> Amen. Revelation 17:14 tells us this. It says, "These will make war against the Lamb, but the land will conquer them because he is the Lord of Lords and King of Kings." Somebody help me here. Those with him are called chosen and faithful. And listen to this last verse in Revelation. It says, "He wore a robe dipped in blood and his name is called the Word of God. And he has a name written on his robe and on his thigh." Get this. Jesus is tatted. You deal with that later at lunch and your small group. But here's what it says on his tattoo. King of kings and lord of lords. Say that with me. King of kings and lord of lords. Say it like you're saying it with your mouth and words are coming out. King of kings and lord of lords. Now, here's a question I don't want you to miss in the passage. What do we make about the birds? So, that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches. Well, theologians will tell you there's possibly four different interpretations of these birds. Some believe that the birds of the air actually represent Satan and his work in the church. If you lean to a strict dispensationalism, that's where you would land. Others believe the birds represent shelter for kingdom citizens, you and I. Others believe that birds of the air represent the nations coming to the kingdom. And then there are some people that think the birds of the air mean nothing. They're just an insignificant part of the story. I I prefer prefer interpretation number three. Jesus is suggesting that what started as a small obscure primarily Jewish movement in Bethlehem will one day result in all the peoples of the world coming to know him. >> There's an everexpanding effect in our world. But quickly there's an I'm running out of time. It's just two verses. I'm sorry. There is an everexpanding effect in our lives. Listen to what the Bible says in 2 Peter 1:5-8. It says, "For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if you possess these qualities, what? Watch this little phrase. in increasing measure. They will keep you from being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. There ought to be an everinccreasing measure of his work and his activity in our lives. And and it brings us to this closing question, if you will. Do you have faith? And is your faith growing? Do you have faith? And is your faith growing? Um, some of you know that I'm an upland game hunter. That means that I sometimes like to kill your quail, have them for dinner. They're scrumptious. The reason your house cat likes those little quail that I hope he lets stay alive is because they're scrumptious. On the screen is uh the world famous Mr. Nash. That's my bird dog. He's um made popular by my wife on Facebook many times posting him on top of our counters other places when he gets a little bored. But uh yesterday I took Mr. Nash to his trainer. I this trainer is the same guy I bought him from a little over six years ago and I've been taking him once a month in the summer because summer vacation for your dog when it's a German shorthair is really good. Our house was so peaceful last night. I almost overslept this morning. I put swim trunks on on the way to church. Man, I was so groggy. Uh so we get a month in the summer where he goes to be with his family. He met some of his puppies. He he uh was used as a stud dog last year there. And there's a couple of his little dog his little puppies there just as crazy as him. But while I was there outside of Yuma, a little town called Welton, Arizona, I had the opportunity to talk to Rashan, whom I known for now a little over six years. Rashan's had some serious health problems. He just got out of the hospital a couple weeks ago. And I put my hand on Rashan's shoulder and I said, 'Ran, I I don't believe I've ever asked you this question, but I've got a question I've been meaning to ask you. Ha. Have you ever come to a place in your life that you know for certain that Jesus is in your heart and that if you were to die that you go to heaven? He said, "Well, sometimes I think I made it and I'm just not sure." His words, exact words were, "I'm just not sure I'm worthy enough." And I was able to explain, "Man, none of us are worthy." But we're made worthy through the work of Christ on the cross. And yesterday, Rashan prayed and asked Jesus Christ into his heart as Lord and Savior. what started as a little small mustard seed conversation is going to grow in his life until he spends eternity with Jesus in heaven. So, let me circle back to that closing question. Have you ever started a faith walk with Jesus? And is your faith growing? Some of you in this room, if I ask you the same question I asked Rashan yesterday morning in Welton, Arizona, have you come to a place in your life that you know for certain that you have eternal life and that if you die today, you'd spend eternity in heaven? Some of you in this room, if you were honest, would have to say, as Rashan did yesterday, no. But that doesn't have to be an eternal no. You can say an eternal yes to Jesus. And in just a moment, we're going to give you a chance to do that. But once you do that, that's not the end. There's an ever expanding effect of the seed of the gospel in our individual lives. God wants you to grow. I'm so excited about some of the things Pastor Andrew and the rest of our team across all of our locations is going to be unpacking as we get to the end of the summer about a spiritual development pathway for you to give you some clear guidance and direction on how to continue to grow ever increasingly grow in your faith. It's going to change our church. It's going to change your life. But you need to not just stop where you are. You need to continue to grow in your faith.