Matthew 13:24-43 Stories of the Kingdom

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called

Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in. Welcome to Recast Church.

I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here, and I just want to say that I'm really glad that you've taken time out of your busy schedules to gather together as God's people and get an opportunity to worship

Him together. I say this very often, but this is one of the only things we can't do alone, is we can't gather together alone, and so you've taken a step in spiritual growth just by gathering together as God's people, by rubbing shoulders with other

Christians, by getting an opportunity to interact with those who love Him and will help call you back towards Him throughout your week, and so that's an encouraging thing, and I'm glad that you're here.

Recast is a strange name for a church. I don't know, those of you who attend here for a while, do you ever have to answer questions about the name of your church, a handful of us regularly, and those of you who have been around here for a while, you know what that means and you know why.

I assume that you do, but at the same time, I like to bring that in front of us from time to time and just remind us of our core values.

I think at the start of 2017, it's beneficial for us to remind ourselves regularly what that name means.

It is indeed an acronym for our core values. It is replicating. We want to be a people who are replicating

Christ's love out in our community and among those around us, and eventually, we want to be a church that's planting other churches, and so that's replication.

The community component, the C in Recast, is for community, and that's that we want to be a blessing to where God has planted us.

That means that we want to be a blessing to this specific community, Matawan, where we're at and in the neighborhoods where you live and in the places where you work, but we want to have a focus on loving our community.

Authenticity, just simply meaning that we want to have real relationships with people. We don't want this to be a place where you feel like you have to dress up and put on your smiley face to walk through the doors if you're having a bad week.

I hope you feel free to share that with somebody even this morning to say, yeah, it's been tough. Can you pray for me? And that we would rejoice with those who are rejoicing, but we would also mourn with those who are mourning, and we would be a church that's sensitive to that and be open to people being honest with what's going on.

And simplicity is simply one of our core values that means that we are streamlined. We don't have a lot of programming, but we have the programming that we think you need in order to grow in your faith, grow in community, and grow in service towards others.

And so we don't inundate you with a lot of programs. We don't provide tons of options for everybody, but we do provide what we believe that you need.

And then lastly, but not least, the one that I would say ties it all together is the T, which means truth, stands for truth, and it is that we believe

God's word is indeed true and is worthy of our attention and really ultimately worthy of our obedience in our lives.

And so that's the core values here. And this text this morning that we're going to be looking at in a few minutes is really

Jesus illustrating for us the kingdom of God in three ways. He's going to give us three parables.

So we're going to look at three parables of Jesus in Matthew. And it's really about replication.

So that's why I wanted to go through those core values. We don't really talk about replication a whole lot here, but that really is the heartbeat of the text this morning, is

Jesus talking about replication, about the expansion of his kingdom. You see,

I want to remind us all that Jesus came to be a king, and he conquered sin, he conquered death, and then he ascended to the right hand of his father and has been granted a crown as a king.

Last year we spent a good deal of the time of last year in the book of Revelation, walking through that book and trying to come to understand that Jesus is indeed going to someday rise up off of that throne right now at the right hand of the father, and he's going to come back to judge the world and to set up his final eternal kingdom for those who have joined under his umbrella of protection and have accepted him as their king.

And it's the rule and reign of Jesus that he is illustrating for us in our text this morning. If you're going to have a ruler, think about it this way, if you're going to have a ruler, is it a good thing to know how they're going to rule?

Do you kind of want to know how they're going to roll? Do you want to know some things about them if they're going to be ruling over you? Isn't that kind of a little bit what the misery has been over the last year with the whole political process?

Trying to figure out who's going to be our leader, who are they going to be? And now it would be reasonable, and if any of you, have you just tuned out of news in the last month or so?

I mean, some of us were just so overwhelmed with it that we just shut it off and we're like, good, it's over, whatever, whatever the result is, whatever.

But now if you've been listening to the news in the last few weeks, what is it all about? It's all about how is he going to run this nation?

How is he going to rule? How is he going to be in his presidency, right?

Now that we know that on the 20th he's going to be sworn in, now how does that look? And what does that mean for us?

And Jesus is here basically saying, I am indeed a king, and I'm going to explain to you what my rule will look like.

What's it going to look like when I finally assume control and I'm finally in charge? How is all of that going to roll down?

And so that's what we're looking at, is him basically giving us illustrations of his rule, illustrations of his kingdom.

And I would suggest to you that when he first taught the things that we're going to look at this morning, he was radically altering the view of his contemporaries when it came to their understanding of what

God's rule would look like. What would it look like when Messiah finally came and God set up the one who would be in the line of King David, who would be his chosen leader, and the one who would save his people from their sins, what was that rule going to look like?

It changed significantly by these stories that Jesus was telling. He was seeking to alter the mind of those

Jews that he was talking to, and ultimately I would suggest to you he's trying to change our mind as well. Trying to get us in line with the views of his kingdom.

And even if we don't come to this text this morning with the same questions that they had back in first century Palestine, I would suggest that these three parables have the power to radically alter the way that we live even in this next week in 2017.

So if you have a Bible in front of you or a means to navigate to a Bible in front of you, I would encourage you to go over to Matthew chapter 13, verses 24 through 43.

Again it's Matthew 13, 24 through 43. I don't want to put anybody on the spot, but if you don't have a

Bible and you don't have a means and you're going to kind of feel left out for the next couple minutes while we're reading it, I'd encourage you to please just raise your hand.

And Rachel is back here, and she's got some, and Catherine, they've got some Bibles and they would love to just bring one to you.

So if you need one, don't be shy, just raise your hand and they will bring one to you. And remember you can keep that too.

That is just, we want everybody to have a copy of God's word. And so that would be for you. But follow along, everybody recast, this is

God's word to us, this is what he desires for us to hear. I'm going to read it all in its entirety, Matthew chapter 13, verses 24 through verse 43.

He, Jesus, put another parable before them saying, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.

But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.

So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, master, did you not sow good seed in your field?

How then does it have weeds? He said to them, an enemy has done this. So the servant said to him, then do you want us to go and gather them?

But he said, no, lest in gathering the weeds, you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.

And at harvest time, I will tell the reapers, gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned.

But gather the wheat into my barn. He put another parable before them saying, the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field.

It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it is grown, it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.

He told them another parable. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened.

All these things Jesus said to the crowd in parables. Indeed, he said nothing to them without parables. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet.

I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.

Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples came to him saying, explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.

He answered, the one who sows the good seed is the son of man, the field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom.

The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age and the reapers are angels.

Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The son of man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers and throw them into the fiery furnace.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.

He who has ears, let him hear. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much that you have called us together as your people this morning.

I recognize that we come from a variety of different issues and things that we faced this past week.

For some of us, this has been an awesome week and it's been encouraging and it's been uplifting. And then for others, it's been a bit of a downer and we've had difficult news or tough things to face or even just health issues or bad news.

Father, I pray that you would be encouraging those who need encouragement, that you would be strengthening those who need to be strengthened, that you would be challenging those who need challenge.

Father, through your word, I thank you that you have indeed revealed your kingdom, that we have hope that there is a future for those who are yours.

Father, that there is a hope to come out from underneath the sin and the crud and the struggles of this life to look forward to a kingdom that will not be taken away and that cannot be shaken, that is guaranteed by the sacrifice of your son,

Jesus Christ. Father, I pray that you would meet us in this place, that you would help us to be mindful and attentive to you, that you would allow us to worship you with our voices now in song.

And I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Ladies and gentlemen, you can go ahead and take your seats.

Big thanks to Dave and the band for leading us. I appreciate the time and energy that they put in each week in leading us in corporate worship.

I hope that you were already worshiping when you arrived, but the opportunity to gather together and worship is awesome.

At any time during the message, if you need to get more coffee or juice or donuts, you're not going to distract me. You can feel free to take advantage of that.

Just for your information, those of you that aren't familiar, restrooms are out the hall. I ask that you use the ones on this end.

So women's downstairs, men's upstairs. Save the bathrooms that are down here in case you're familiar with the building for the children's program.

But I recognize that the seats that you're sitting in are not the most comfortably designed seats known to mankind, and so if you need to get up and stretch out,

I know that some of us have bad backs or, you know, even if you don't have a bad back, that can get uncomfortable. So if you need to get up and stretch out in the back, take advantage of that too.

And again, you're not going to distract me with that. But I do ask one other thing, and that's that you open your Bibles if you're not already there to Matthew chapter 13, looking at 24 through 43.

Again, that's going to be our outline for the text for the morning, and so I really do try to walk us through the text of Scripture, and it's beneficial for you to have that open so you can see that the things that I'm saying are coming from God's Word.

But Jesus told stories as a way of teaching. I think that you know that probably if you've been around the church at all or you were raised maybe in a church in any context or any way or just have some familiarity with the concept of parables.

His stories were not merely illustrations, as I pointed out last week, but they were the main points.

They were not just illustrating his formal lecture, like he got up and gave three points and then illustrated each point or something to that effect.

Instead, the stories were the entire ball of wax, the whole deal.

And then he told the story and then he left it up to his listeners to ascertain the spiritual implications from those stories.

And so that's kind of what we're looking at when we're talking about parables. It is the teaching. It's not like he gave some teaching and then just supported it with a story.

Yet as we're going to see in these three parables, the meaning for those who have spiritual eyes is often quite clear.

I have a feeling that if you were to read these three with eyes of an understanding, if you have a relationship with Jesus Christ, if you've been saved by him, then you're going to come to some similar conclusions on your own that I came to this morning.

I think that most of these stories really do pop for us and they come to life in a spiritual understanding for those who are his.

As was indicated last week in the text where Jesus was talking about how he used parables and basically saying those with spiritual understanding, those with eyes to see and ears to hear, who the spirit has already been working on, whose eyes have been opened, they will come to understanding.

But all three of these parables this morning start off with Jesus explaining that they all three pertain to the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom of heaven is a synonym for the kingdom of God. And they're all intended to describe something of the rule and reign of Jesus Christ, who is the rightful king.

And for those of you who like to know where we're going, I'm going to give you a little bit of an outline. I don't do this every week, so I'm throwing a bone to those of you who are a little bit more organized in your listening.

And I'm even throwing a bone to those of you who like alliteration, three points and alliterated. So you're welcome.

I do that once in a while just to keep you guessing. So we are looking at, the first parable will show that the kingdom of God is patient.

It is patient. Jesus did not come to establish an instant kingdom where he would set up a rule and reign immediately on the earth and destroy all of his opposition and usher in a kingdom where he was the only rightful ruler and everybody bowed their knee immediately to him.

Instead, he came to alter and change the world over centuries of time until all of history culminates in a final judgment at one main event, where his kingdom will come to its complete and utter fruition, where he will indeed rule and reign over all of the peoples on the new earth.

So patient is the first. The second parable will show that the kingdom of God is prodigious.

Now did I just try to shoehorn a P word in there and you're like, well, yeah, maybe I did a little bit. But prodigious is the perfect word for this and you probably don't know what that word means or if you do, you're awesome and you've got a really good vocabulary.

But prodigious just means remarkably or impressively great in extent, size, or degree.

Remarkably or impressively great in extent, size, or degree. And for that reason,

I chose this word as the P word for this middle parable that you're going to see why that is so significant.

I'm going to walk us through the way that Jesus shows that the kingdom of God is prodigious.

Starts very small, but is impressive in its growth, impressive in its extent, and that's going to be a cause for gratitude for us as well as a cause for encouragement.

And then the third parable is going to highlight that the kingdom of God is permeating. The kingdom of God doesn't merely have an impact on those who have pledged allegiance to the king, but it is ever expanding.

It is advancing. It is growing and impacting all of life. Just like a little bit of yeast eventually leavens an entire lump of dough.

It permeates it. It covers all of it. It eventually has an impact on everything in our society, in our culture, and throughout the world.

And so let's begin with our first parable, which is the one about patience. The parable itself is given in verses 24 through verse 30, but Jesus offered a private interpretation to the 12 disciples in verses 34 through 43.

So we're going to take all of that together and really describe this parable for us as we walk through it.

Jesus starts just like he did with the parable of the soils from a couple of weeks before Christmas. He begins with a farmer who goes out to sow seeds in his field.

Now remember the parable of the soils was about the quality of the soil on which the seed fell. You're familiar with that.

Some of it fell on the pathway, some of it fell on the tilled ground, some of it fell on rocky, thorny soil, and so forth.

And so that was a quality of soil issue. The seed was a given that it was the word of God in that case.

But here, he says, the farmer goes out to sow good seeds.

The emphasis is on the quality of the seed now. That's what we're talking about in this first parable. And the farmer sows good seed, but I want to just point out, how many of you have ever sown grass seed?

You've planted some grass seed in your yard or you've planted something. The expectation is that what you plant is what you get, right?

You have hopes of that. But if you've ever gone to a store and purchased grass seed, you notice on the side of the bag that there is a percentage of purity.

Have any of you ever noticed that? There's a percentage of purity on the side of that bag that is always something less than 100%.

And even in our modern era, even in our era of technology, we cannot guarantee that some kind of seed hasn't snuck its way into your grass seed and is going to grow alongside of that, right?

So we don't even get 100 % in our day and age. And I don't know what the standard was back in that time for good seed in ancient

Palestine. But as the farmer goes to sow wheat in his field, we're going to see that here in just a moment.

The text tells us it's a wheat field. When he goes to sow wheat, he's pretty sure that he will have a harvest of wheat.

Not crabgrass, not dandelions, not anything else. But he is pretty confident that whatever they were using at that time, he's confident that he's going to be sowing wheat.

But in the night, while his men were not guarding the fields, an enemy comes in and sows weeds in his wheat field.

Now, who would go through all that trouble, right? I mean, Jesus, come on, for just a second, could you give us a break? I mean, isn't your story a little bit extreme?

Would someone go through all the hard work and toil of sowing seeds out in a field, you know, without technology, without any of the stuff that we have today, going out walking through the field in the middle of the night, in the darkness, stumbling around planting seeds in somebody else's field, weeds.

How vindictive would you have to be? How vengeful would you have to be? How spiteful and full of malice would you have to be to do such a thing?

Of course nobody would ever do something like that, except for just a moment, if you were to take a snapshot of your own heart and recognize our own creativity when it comes to sin, right?

Don't we have, I think that the human heart has very little limitation on creativity when it comes to sin, creative ways to sin, creative ways to avenge ourselves, creative ways to plan malice towards others.

I find it interesting, by the way, just to clarify and to seal the deal, there's actually a

Roman law on ancient law books that I uncovered this week through my research historians have identified this.

Of course, I didn't find it myself, I didn't go over there and dust off scrolls or anything, but they've actually found a

Roman law that says, that gives a penalty and punishment for anyone who would sow a specific weed called darnel, it's the one that is actually used in this text, and that there was a

Roman punishment for anyone who would sow that specific weed in the field of an enemy or someone else.

So, it obviously was significant enough of an issue to have a law in the law books against it.

Like, that's literally, it was a significant thing. Darnel, by the way, is a specific weed, the one that Jesus refers to here, he uses the

Greek word for it, it still grows in the Middle East today, it's a common plant, it looks almost identical to wheat, only can it be really discerned, except for experts, only can it be discerned is different from wheat once it comes to fruit.

That's when you see it, that's when you know, oh, that's darnel and that's wheat. And you or I would be able to identify the difference between the two once the head is formed on it and the grain is beginning to form, you go, oh, that one's not the same as that one.

But it's only then. So it makes sense in this parable, by the way, that Jesus is kind of making sense with what we see in science today and what he says in verse 26, it's only once the wheat begins to bear grain that the weeds are then found, and by that point it's too late to separate them, it's too late.

The servants come to the master and seek permission to remove the weeds from the wheat field, but in wisdom and patience, that master knows that removing those weeds is going to destroy the entire crop, they're by this point, their roots are gonna be interlaced, there's gonna be all kinds of damage that happens to the wheat harvest if they go in and try to remove the weeds.

And so he comes up with a plan to, at the end, when they've already reached maturity and you're gonna go ahead and hack them off anyways, that's when we'll separate them, he says, we'll wait until the end, we'll wait until harvest time.

And then the weeds can be gathered, they can be bundled up and thrown into the furnace to be burned, while the wheat can be easily gathered into the barn.

Well Jesus leaves us a key for this parable in the latter part of the chapter. He says,

I am the farmer, okay, well that's really good to know, that's interesting to find out that Jesus is the one who is sowing this field.

Well what is the field? What's being sown? What's going on? The field is the whole world. And it's important to note that many have thought of the field as the church, but Jesus openly declares here that the field is indeed the whole world, the whole world is his to sow seed in.

The good seeds are the children of the kingdom. Think about that for a minute. You have been sown, you have been placed in the world, you have been intentionally planted in the world.

As a child of the king, as one who is redeemed, you have been intentionally and purposefully placed.

Think about that. And for what end? To grow, to expand, to replicate.

You have been planted by Jesus. The weeds, on the other hand, are the sons of the evil one.

The enemy is Satan. The harvest is the final judgment. The reapers are his angels. And I love to note that, by the way, the possessive pronoun should not be lost on us, sometimes it is, but his angels.

Jesus identifies in this text, he has angels. We could easily skip over that one small word and just keep going along in the text and go, yeah,

I get the story, Jesus, but he says, no, those are my angels. They are his.

I mean, that is a pretty dramatic assertion for a man raised in Galilee. Would you agree with me on that? It is a pretty dramatic assertion.

I have angels that will do my bidding and then in the end will come and reap the world? Wow. You see, the deity of Christ is shown all throughout the

Gospels, all throughout the Scriptures. It is not just in the, there is some proof text that people will turn to and they will go here, here, here, okay, now

I know that Jesus is God, but it is all over the place. And he claims dramatic and radical things for himself, like he possesses angels.

That is pretty cool. But in verses 41 through 43, we find the main point of his interpretation of this story for us.

What does he mean when he tells this story? A lot of times we try to find out what we want to draw from it or whatever, but this story, this is not a story primarily about the mixed nature of the kingdom.

Now, that is what often draws our attention, is the nature of the weeds and the wheat growing up together.

That grabs our attention. And over the years, many preachers have made a big deal about the combination of these two in the same field, even kind of drawing out that the church is like, well, there is believers and unbelievers within the same body and, you know, we do not really separate them out or we would never do church discipline or we would never do this or that because, you know, we just do not want to be, it is not for us to judge or they would draw all kinds of analogies and illustrations to this parable.

And I was kind of tempted to do the same at the start, but then as I did the research and I really worked through it and I dug in and I saw what

Jesus is saying, Jesus is answering a fundamental question for the disciples by telling this story.

It is a question that you and I do not ask because of where we live in history. So we are not curious about this question that was burning on the disciples' mind because now from hindsight, we already see all of these things.

But the disciples had a primary question that was constantly on their mind as they followed

Jesus around the countryside. When are you going to do this thing? When are you going to do it,

Jesus? When are you going to finally do this thing called the kingdom? When are you going to pull out the blazing sword of fire and wipe out the pagan

Roman oppressors? When are you going to save your people, Jesus? Come on, we are under oppression, we are walking around the countryside watching the way that the

Romans have us under their thumb. When is it going to be? When are you going to be the king that you were sent to be?

And this parable addresses this with a subtle rebuke to his disciples, patience, patience.

Jesus is declaring in this parable that his kingdom will eventually come to completion.

Justice will be done. He will one day rule and reign over a kingdom of peace, a kingdom of joy, a kingdom of delight.

But that's going to come in the end. That's going to come in the end. The judgment will come.

The enemies of God will indeed be judged. The children of the king will in the end, according to this text, shine like the sun in the kingdom of the father.

But for now, for now where we live, for then where they lived, a patient existence together with those in opposition.

Jesus is in essence saying, in this first parable of the kingdom, as D .A.

Carson, one of my favorite New Testament scholars said, his kingdom will not immediately cast out all opposition, but it will coexist with opposition until the end.

The disciples needed to hear this. And I'm convinced that where we live today, we need to hear this, maybe even more now than ever.

We need to be reminded as we long for everything to go our way, as we long for everything to just be really pleasant for Christians, to be really good for us, right?

I mean, if we're honest, don't we want that? Don't we want it to go really well for us? But is that where our hope is placed?

Man, that is significant for us to get that down. Is our hope placed in the world liking us and making it easy for us?

I would suggest that Jesus is saying something other than that here regarding the application of this first point.

We need to be very mindful of our expectations regarding faith in Jesus Christ. Many of us may have been walking with the

Lord for years. Some here in the room are newer in their faith and are kind of learning this and are learning to take new steps of faith, and it's all kind of brand new to you.

But even as long as I've been in the faith, it only takes one election cycle for me to forget that the calling for the

Christian is one of patience, one of long -term endurance.

To a person in this room, we are being called to a long obedience

Christward. A long obedience Christward. It's true, and it's a joy to state, and I think an accurate fact, that the arc of history is bending towards justice.

That doesn't mean that this month, this year, or even this decade is going to be gumdrops and rainbows for us.

It bends there, and it will eventually arrive at justice. But for the meantime, his kingdom is one of a mixed bag of the sons of the kingdom and the sons of darkness.

I've heard so many Christians over the past year on Facebook acting as though our hope was in the removal of any opposition.

We all but said outright, if we could just get rid of these weeds, then we would be able to really grow.

But our hope, according to Jesus in this parable, is a very, very long -term perspective.

My hope is not in 2017. My hope is not in getting our own building as a church, as nice as that will be.

How many of you are looking forward to that? That's going to be a pretty cool thing. That's not where my hope rests. My hope is not in that one day

I might hold my own grandkids. That's something I look forward to. That's something that would be kind of cool, to live that long and see my kids' kids.

I would like that. Where is your hope? My hope is in a king.

My hope is in a king, and he has promised to set all things right on one awesome and amazing glorious day.

Where is our hope? It's a call for each one of us to live now in a patient expectancy for the return of our king, that he will set it all right in the end.

The second parable of the kingdom is much shorter, but still quite profound. Again, using an agricultural story, starting in verse 31, the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field.

And in verse 32, Jesus concludes by emphasizing the size of the seed compared to the end result.

That's what he's going for in this comparison. So when he talks about a mustard seed, is it the smallest possible seed?

No. Is it the largest possible plant at the end? No. But by contrast of the start to the end result, it is dramatic.

And so he's shooting for that. Now, we might use for our purposes, you know, you could probably think of some illustrations right now that you might use.

An acorn to an oak tree, pretty dramatic size difference, pretty impressive change there.

I'm always amazed when you see an acorn and you think there's an oak tree in there. That's a pretty impressive process, right?

So Jesus often used agriculture for that reason, but I think that it was important.

Why would he not use an acorn then or something like that? Remember that he's speaking to an agrarian society where agriculture was their livelihood.

All of them understood agriculture. And so planting was a big deal. Some even speculate that Jesus may very well, he's in a house now while he's telling these parables, and it's quite possible that he just used things that he had accessible to him.

Maybe there was a literal pouch full of mustard seeds sitting there that were just available for him to grab a hold of one and use it as a case study or an illustration.

Some people think that. It's unclear whether that's the case or not, and of course I want to be clear when I'm speculating, but it's quite possible that he just used things on hand to tell his stories.

But now if you're somewhat argumentative or just generally skeptical, then you might want me to tell you right now what the smallest seed is, because Jesus declares the mustard seed is the smallest, and actually we have scientific evidence that the epiphytic orchid is the smallest seed.

So okay, Jesus did not say the epiphytic orchid is the smallest of all seeds.

He said the mustard seed is. The seeds, by the way, of this specific orchid are not visible to the unaided human eye.

You have to have help to see it. It appears as a powdery substance in large quantities.

So when Jesus declared that these are the smallest seeds, some are going to have issue right away.

Like you're wrestling with this. Now personally, I'm not troubled because Jesus is clearly using this as an illustration, and the size differential is the issue of what he's driving for.

Equally, it's surmised that the mustard seed would be the smallest agricultural seed used in that era, in that time, and so when he's talking about planting, when he's talking about sowing, what would you sow?

They probably weren't planting epiphytic orchids in their gardens, and so he's just taking what he had available to him at the time.

I don't believe that Jesus is giving us a lecture on the extent of his botanical understanding.

That's not the purpose of this, okay? Now, some of us might be a little bit more caught up in that, and authentically, if you're here and that is genuinely a struggle for you,

I'd like you to talk with me. I mean, I'd love to set up a time, maybe we can even just catch a little bit of time after the service, and we can talk about the trustworthiness of Scripture generally, and the trustworthiness of Jesus Christ specifically, and we can work through that together.

I would love to go through that with anybody who wrestles with this, and I don't want to make this a simple thing, because for me, it is, and I get it, but at the same time, if it's a hang -up for your faith, if anything that I say, if anything you encounter in Scripture is a hang -up to your faith, then

I would love to walk through that with you, and just see if we can come to a conclusion on it.

But the black mustard plant that Jesus is referencing is indeed a very tiny seed. You see it in the picture there, it is quite tiny, but when sown, it often grows to become the largest of all garden plants, anything that would have been grown agriculturally and used commercially in that area, in that era and area, and it grows, it can grow up to 12 feet routinely, and has been seen up to, or recorded to be up to 15 feet tall.

So it's a quite large plant. Jesus could have probably found something smaller or larger for his illustration, but his concern was the start of it being tiny, and the end of it being huge, prodigious growth is what he is shooting for.

Jesus is again answering a question, by the way, that would have been in the heart of his followers. When is this going to take off?

When are the followers going to roll in? If you're going to have a kingdom, Jesus, you're going to need some followers. You're going to need some people.

You're going to need some growth. You're going to need some structure. You're going to need some things to happen, and happen quickly, and I think at the heart of this question is something even more fundamental.

His disciples were asking, will it be successful? Is this going to work?

I mean, they're putting their whole lives on the line. They've left their livelihood. Some of them left their father in the boat to count the fish as they left the family business.

They didn't have anything else to fall back on, and so they are out there, completely 100 % in. Is it going to be successful?

They want to know, but according to Jesus, the kingdom of God is going to grow prodigiously.

It will increase from very humble means to a large shelter for many in the end. The one who has ears, to the one who has ears, this is a parable of encouragement.

I think many of us in the room probably need some encouragement. We need to know that we're on the winning team, that in the end, this is going to succeed, and that we have hope, and that our hope is not poorly placed.

But in the end, he is indeed going to bring all of this to fruition. God's kingdom will expand.

It will grow to an amazing and surprising size compared with its beginnings. Now to us, and where we live, it doesn't apply to us the same as it did to his disciples when they were first learning this parable.

We now live in an era when we've seen, and we're the beneficiaries of significant growth, right?

We came into this world where there was already a fairly strong establishment of the kingdom of God, even in our community, where there were structures in place.

There were things that were already here. The mustard seed was planted, and it has grown, and we are the beneficiaries of that amazing tree that currently provides structure, and safety, and security for many of our lives.

We live in an established kingdom, and our faith rests on the shoulders of a couple of millennia of growth.

The disciples sacrificed, and the kingdom grew. Paul sacrificed to spread the good news, and the first converts in Europe under Paul's missionary journeys, and the good news grew, and the kingdom grew, and the early church fathers wrestled with scriptures, and landed on truth with doctrines, and writing, and the plant grew, and Luther, and Calvin, and Zwingli, and Huss brought correction when the church went astray, and the church forsook the gospel for power, and for rules, and for influence, and they were brought in as a corrective influence, and the kingdom grew.

We stand on the shoulders of many with our study Bibles, and international missions agencies, and church networks, and Christian bookstores, and Christian radio, and Sundays off work for many of us, right?

Are we the beneficiaries of significant things that have gone on before us? We are, and this is where I would suggest that we apply this text by expressing first and foremost gratitude, thankfulness for the work that has gone before us, thankfulness for the sacrifices that have been made to bring about a more pleasant opportunity for us to express our faith.

Now again, it's not always going to be that way, but a gratitude for the growth that has often been fueled by the sacrifices of those who went before us.

We rest in the branches of a tree that started from a tiny seed centuries ago, and further,

I would suggest to you that we express gratitude towards what's gone in the past, but encouragement that this kingdom will indeed continue to grow.

It will continue to expand until the day that Jesus Christ returns. The growth of the kingdom, by the way, is not only found in programs, institutions, and radio stations.

The growth is ultimately in the lives of people who come under his protection.

Growth of the kingdom doesn't always look like things getting easier for us. Don't misunderstand me, but growth in the kingdom is room for more and more to come under the authority of King Jesus, and that's an opportunity that all of us have to take part in, and that's the illustration of the last parable.

The last parable is the shortest and is really only verse 33, and you can see it there, but this parable is also about growth.

It's about a different kind of growth, where the parable of the mustard seed is about prodigious massive, it's about the extent, the magnitude, the increase, the surprise of this growth.

The parable of the yeast is highlighting a permeating growth. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman kneaded into three measures of dough.

How many of you in this room have ever made bread? I'm just curious. Okay, a lot. Wow, that's great. So, I had, it was interesting, while I was literally writing this,

I usually find a coffee shop with the weather, the roads the way they were, and my kids were gone this week, and so I actually sat at my living room table, or dining room table, and wrote my sermon this week on Wednesday, and my wife was in the kitchen making bread.

And so, I asked her some questions about that whole process, literally perfect illustration while I was writing this.

But this woman adds three, adds some yeast to three measures of dough, and she adds a little leavening agent to what amounts to a large quantity of dough, by the

Greek words that are used here. This is estimated to be enough dough to feed a small village for a day. So this is a significant chunk of dough, and she puts a little bit of leaven in there.

Hold on a second. But over time, the yeast leavens the entire lump, and permeates it all.

It gets all the way through it, and in there. This answers a more technical question that was likely in the minds of the disciples, by the way.

How will this kingdom grow? How is it going to grow? So the first parable answered, how will the king get rid of his enemies?

When is all of that going to happen, and how is he going to come into his power? The second answered, will it be successful?

But the last one answers the question, how will it be successful?

And Jesus says, slowly but surely, the kingdom will be working in subtle and often unforeseen ways to effect change in the whole world.

You see, when yeast is added to dough, I'm not convinced that anybody sits back and watches it, right?

Do you sit back, and you take that in, and you observe it, and you watch it? Has anybody ever? It would be interesting. That would be a great application for your, if you've got an iPhone, use that time -lapse on it.

That would be kind of cool to watch, wouldn't it? I haven't seen one of those, but I bet you could actually see the difference if you watched it in a time -lapse photography.

But it almost doubles in size over just a few hours. Those of you who haven't made bread like me, I didn't even know until I was talking with my wife, and she said, yeah, it's just a few hours, and it's pretty, it gets in there, and it covers the whole thing, and eventually you've got leavened dough, and it's going to cook up nice.

The smell of fresh bread, right? I shouldn't be saying that, like, you're going to want me out of here.

But the kingdom is not going to expand like a firecracker. It's in subtle and unforeseen ways, subtle and unforeseen ways that it's going to affect change in the whole world.

It will not be like an atomic bomb dropped on the world scene. It will be like yeast added to dough.

I don't imagine that you sit by and watch that happen. It's a slow and subtle process, below -the -surface kind of process that happens just without notice until you come back a few hours later, and wow, it's changed.

How does the kingdom grow? Through simple and ordinary means. I believe that the vast majority of Christians will enter that eternal kingdom through some pretty ordinary means.

I had a volunteer stay with me on a Wednesday night. They probably could have just been in a hurry,

I don't even know, but they stayed with a little eight -year -old boy back in 1981 and explained the gospel to me.

Just a very ordinary thing, a pretty routine thing. No fireworks.

I don't even know if the person who led me to faith in Christ even remembers the situation.

You know what I mean? I haven't seen him in years. But some, maybe in the room, maybe you were saved through a large -scale evangelistic crusade that felt like fireworks and it was a big hoopla and all of that stuff.

But even in that, I would suggest that the leavening process had already begun for you even before you ever attended that event.

And it was pretty simple things in your life that were going on, leading you to faith in Christ.

There's already a process going on in your heart. And let me suggest that this leavening process is something that the disciples needed to take on then, and something that you and I need to take on as responsibility now.

So far my applications have been a patient hope that refuses to put hope in the things of this world, but instead looks towards a day when

Jesus will return for us and set up the eternal kingdom of his Father. Also we are to have a thankfulness, a gratitude for the growth of the kingdom that he has given to us and the many encouraging benefits and the encouragement that it will continue to grow.

And we should also continue to build on that foundation with trust that his kingdom will endure and expand.

But lastly, we should take seriously our call to be a leavening agent to the world around us.

When we leave here this morning, we walk out into a world that is in need of a change and that we are meant to change.

It needs it, and you have it. You have the good news, you have the truth that will change, that will expand the kingdom, that will permeate.

So will we take the leaven to Stryker? Will we take the leaven to WMU?

Will we take the leaven to high schools? Will we take the leaven to our neighborhoods, to our extended families, to wherever it is that you work?

Will we have a subtle, consistent, beneficial impact on those around us?

And I'm not merely speaking about dropping the gospel bomb in the middle of a conversation around the water cooler or in the teacher's lounge or wherever it is that you work.

That's not what I'm talking about. Are you leaven in the way you work? In the way that you perform the duties that are your responsibility?

Do you use your words for building others up or are you tearing others down? Are you a blessing as an employer or an employee?

Are you a blessing as a teacher or as a student? We do not only change our world through speaking the gospel.

We must speak the gospel. I say that all the time. You can't just show the gospel. You have to speak the gospel, but you also have to show it.

And we can change our world as a positive, permeating influence by living out the gospel. And so, that is the calling to all of us, patience, that we would look forward to that long -term picture of Jesus fixing this, taking care of it, prodigious gratitude for what has gone before us and hope that it will continue to grow.

And then permeating our call and our responsibility to go out and have an impact on the world around us.

And all of that is afforded to us because of what we remember each week as we come to the tables of communion. We come to the tables of communion as a reminder of the sacrifice of our king.

He died for us so that we could have the promise of eternal life with him. We take a cracker to remember his body that was broken in our place and we take the juice to remember his blood that was shed for all of us.

He did all of that because our relationship with God was broken through our own rebellion and our sin against him.

But Jesus willingly stepped into the judgment that you and I deserved so that anyone who is on the road to judgment and destruction can be brought under the protection of his glorious kingdom.

If you've not asked Jesus Christ to forgive you, you don't accept him as your king, you're kind of here just checking things out and trying to figure it out and trying to wrestle through these things.

And I would encourage you to please skip communion this morning. We are going to have a song here. You can take that in. Contemplate and consider what it is that Jesus Christ has done for you.

He loves you deeply. He gave his life for you and all that he's asking is that you come to him by faith and believe in him and trust him.

But if you're all in with Jesus and you've already made that commitment and that decision and your allegiance is to him as king, then please feel free during this next song to come to any of the four tables to remember his sacrifice for you.

There's a table in each of the four corners of the room. But I'm convinced that if all of us take these parables of the kingdom seriously, we will find that even just a year down the road, the mustard plant will have grown.

The kingdom will be more firmly rooted in our community. More will nest in the branches of his protection.

And we will look back on 2017 as a year of surprising, subtle growth in the kingdom of God as we permeate the culture around us for good.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your kingdom.

That kingdom is just simply that you sent your son to be our king and that he died for us and that he's left us here with a mission to impact the world around us for good.

Not for our good. Not that others would say, wow, that church is nice and does nice things or not that people would look at us at our employment and just go, wow, yeah, she's a nice, she's just a great lady.

She's really a nice woman or he's a nice man and they'd see you're nice.

They would see you're good through us. We would tie carefully and consistently and regularly the things that are good in us to you and that they would see their need met through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Father, I pray that you would give us boldness in 2017 to be a part of your expanding kingdom, to be a people of patience, to be a people of gratitude, but also a people of bold action in this year.

Of being the leaven, being the change, being the ones who bring good to those around us.

Father, our neighborhoods would be better because we live there. That our workplace would be better because we work there.

Father, I pray that you would go before us. Thank you that we have an opportunity to take communion now and to reflect on that it isn't a self -improvement project, that we don't come to the table as ones who are, boy, we're just dead set on doing better this week.

But we come to the table as ones who are saved and we just want to give thanks for that because it's you that's changing us.

So Father, I pray that we would come to the table with humility, gratitude, thankfulness because you have loved us so deeply to give us your son.