WWUTT 2156 The Parable of the Mustard Seed (Mark 4:26-34)

The Purpose of Parables and the Hidden Growth of the Kingdom

Jesus spoke to his disciples in parables, so that they may understand the mysteries of the kingdom of God. And sometimes a lot of those parables had to do with agriculture, so we could see how God grows us when we understand the text.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Mark, we're still in chapter 4, and right after the parable of the sower. So we've got two more parables to cover here. I'll read them both, beginning in verse 26 and going through verse 34 out of the Legacy Standard Bible.

Hear the word of the Lord. And Jesus was saying the kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil, and he sleeps and rises, night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows. How? He himself does not know.

The soil produces crops by itself, first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come. And he was saying, how shall we compare the kingdom of God, or by what parable shall we compare it?

It is like a mustard seed, which when sown upon the soil, though it is the smallest of all the seeds that are upon the soil, yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes the largest of all the garden plants, and forms large branches, so that the birds of the air can nest under its shade.

And with many such parables, he was speaking the word to them as they were able to hear it. And he was not speaking to them without a parable, but he was explaining everything privately to his own disciples.

And that last statement there goes back to something that Jesus had said earlier in chapter 4, where he said, to you it has been given, the mystery of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside, everything comes in parables, so that they may not understand.

So here Jesus continues to teach his disciples, and we have two parables here that have agriculture attached to them. It's just like what we had read previously regarding the parable of the soils, or parable of the sower.

That was the longer parable, but here we have two more parables that come up right on the tail end of that one, and still kind of keep that agricultural theme to them. So of course we've got the parable of the seed that grows into a harvest, and then the parable of the mustard seed that grows into a large tree.

Now what's interesting about these two parables, is they both have to do with seed that has fallen on good soil. So remember in the parable of the sower, the sower goes out to sow seed, some of the seed falls on the path, some in the rocks, some in the thorns.

And the rocks and the thorns in particular represent a person who hears the word, and maybe even shows for a time that they believe the word, and are followers of Jesus. At least it looks like it, initially.

But then as time goes on, they end up falling away. For the rocks, it's because of persecution, or affliction, and they can't handle it, and so they end up abandoning the mission. And then with the seed that falls in the thorns, that represents the cares and concerns of the world, or the temptation of riches, which grows up and chokes the word, and it turns out to be unfruitful.

The seed that fell along the path was the one that hears the word, and then nothing happens at all. Satan snatches it away before it can be sown in his heart. But then some of that seed falls in good soil, and it produces a harvest.

These two parables right here have to do with seed that falls in good soil. So this is demonstrating to us how the word grows, or even the kingdom of God grows, based on the preaching of the word that had been done when the sower went out to sow.

Remember that the seed represented the word, and as the sower is out there sowing seed, this is an evangelist that preaches the word, or a preacher, or when you would share the gospel with a friend, or something like that.

So the gospel is being proclaimed, it is the seed, it is the word, that falls in good soil and is producing a harvest. So here we are reading two parables about seed that has fallen in good soil and what results.

And both of these parables are about an individual and about the kingdom of God. We'll look for the double meaning in both of these parables. I'll explain that further. So first of all, the parable of the seed that produces a harvest, verse 26.

And he was saying the kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil. So again, we go back to a sower sowing seed, just like we had in chapter 4. But this time, or chapter 4, earlier in chapter 4, but this time it's just focusing on the good soil.

We're not hearing about the seed and where it fell and the other places and nothing happened to it. This is seed that falls on the good soil. In verse 27, he sleeps and rises night and day and the seed sprouts and grows.

How? He himself does not know. Now again, Jesus is comparing the kingdom of God to this. The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil. But this parable can apply in two ways. It can apply to the person, to the Christian, who hears the word and grows in the word.

So we could just take this on an individual level. Or it could apply to the kingdom at large, to the church, we might say. And how the word is growing the church in the world. And who comes to belief and where churches are planted and where growth is taking place.

So let's look at it through both lenses, through both interpretations. So he sleeps and rises night and day and the seed sprouts and grows. How? He himself does not know. So let's take this on the individual level.

A person hears the word, they come to faith. And then growth continues in that person even after they come to faith. And so we have this statement of, he sleeps and rises night and day, the seed sprouts and grows.

How? He doesn't know. He's not able to explain it. Remember that in John chapter 3, Jesus told Nicodemus that if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, you must be born again. Now Jesus uses that explanation.

Nicodemus doesn't even understand what he's talking about. Foreign language to him. What are you talking about? Am I going to crawl up into my mother and be born a second time even when I am so old? And Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water in the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

And that going back to Ezekiel, where it was revealed through Ezekiel that God will sprinkle clean water on them and take out their hard heart and put in his own spirit, just as God had said through Ezekiel.

So Jesus is repeating to Nicodemus things that he should have understood as a teacher of Israel. And so he said, you he said, do not marvel that I said to you that you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. So Jesus speaks in mysteries here. He's saying something to Nicodemus about the way that the spirit works. You don't know where it comes from. You don't know where it goes.

You can certainly see the the results. You can see the effects that the spirit has, but you don't know how the spirit is working. A couple of years ago, I did a debate with Leighton Flowers over John 6.

Some of you might have seen this debate. And when Leighton tried to ask me about regeneration preceding faith, I gave him an answer. But then I had also said now all of these things are very mysterious.

We cannot perceive or comprehend this stuff. As much as our human experience is concerned, we believed and so we are saved. But there was a work of God that was happening in our lives before we believed.

It is the Holy Spirit who has changed our heart from that hard-hearted person that was unwilling to listen to God, that was even rebellious against God, that was going our own way and would have led us to our own destruction.

And the spirit comes in and changes us to somebody who is now willing to hear the word and even follows after God. And Dr. Flowers criticized me after that, after the debate in kind of his follow-up online.

He criticized me for saying that I was appealing to mystery. Like, what good is this to any of us if you just say that it's all mysterious? How can you say that regeneration preceding faith is such a pinnacle doctrine in the Protestant Reformation when you can't even understand how it works?

But I was responding exactly the way Jesus responded. Exactly the way that Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3. You don't understand how this works. The spirit works in mysterious ways, as the phrase goes.

We cannot perceive it. We don't understand it. All we know is what the scripture says to us. We know that regeneration precedes faith. We know that everyone has become worthless, as said in Romans 3. There is no one who does good, not even one.

No one seeks for God. We don't, in and of ourselves, even want to go after God. The spirit does work in our lives. That changes us from that person that is rebellious against God to now having ears that are willing to hear and hearts that can perceive to the extent that we are convicted over our sin and recognize we need a Savior, and that Jesus is that Savior.

When the gospel is proclaimed to us, we hear it and believe it. This is the work of God. The spirit that is at work in our lives. We don't understand how that works. We know it works. We just don't understand how it works.

Here, Jesus is doing the same thing in this parable. Appealing to mystery. Saying, the man sleeps and rises night and day. The seed sprouts and grows. How? He himself does not know. We know that when we come to faith, we will continue to grow in faith as we continue to hear the word, as we continue in fellowship with believers, and that we are building one another up in love.

There is maturity that has happened here. We don't know how that works. How is the spirit working in our lives? That my affections for God are growing day by day. I hate my sin more. I love God more. How does this work?

I don't know. But I know it does. And I know that the spirit is at work in me when I can see these things. I can look back and I can see the results of it. Just like you might mow the grass. And when you are mowing the grass, you don't really see the mower doing its work.

But when you look back behind you, you see there's that swath of grass right there that I've cut down. And you can see definitely where the mower has been through. And so it's the same sort of a thing.

You might not see it as you're going to it, but when you look back at it, you can see the work that is being accomplished. And so, verse 28, the soil produces crops by itself. First the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head.

Now, even though Jesus says that, the soil produces crops by itself. The farmer is still at work, right? He's not doing nothing. But he's still tending his crop and caring for it. But he doesn't make it grow.

He can't make it grow. It's just growing. It grows by itself. He can't put his hands into the plant, make it sprout up a few inches taller today than it was yesterday. He has no power over that. But everything seems to be going as it should.

He's doing the part that he needs to do, and here the rest of the plant is growing up as it should. Then the head, then the mature grain in the head. He's got no control over any of this, but he can see the results of it.

And verse 29, but when the grain is ripe, he immediately puts in the sickle because the harvest has come. So, the individual application, once again, a person that's growing in their understanding, their knowledge of God.

They are maturing. They grow in love for God's people, and they grow in love for God and his word. Now, how about the collective aspect of this? So, not just the individual, but even the church. How does this apply?

So, you have seed that is cast. You have many Christians that gather together and become the church. And people go to bed. They rise up. And day after day, the church continues to sprout and grow. How?

Nobody knows. I know that God is at work here. I can't be able to explain it, but I know that he is. This church is here because God is doing a work here. The soil produces crops by itself. First the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head.

We're just growing. We're maturing. We're growing in love for God and for his people. We don't make this happen. It's just happening. Now, that's just one church. How about lots of churches? You can go anywhere in the world.

Anywhere in the state, in the country, in the world, and you will find more churches, probably just like yours, just like the one that you attend, that is loving God, sitting under the preaching of the word, and is growing in the knowledge of that word.

And you'll find it all over the world. Same thing is going on. No matter what language a person speaks, no matter what culture that church is planted in, yet there are people that love God and are growing and maturing in God.

And you don't do anything to make that happen. You're not going over to those churches and making it take place. Your church probably doesn't even have anything to do with that other church that is doing something to make it happen.

It just happens. How do we explain this? How do we see so many Christians all over the world that are coming to faith and growing numerically as well as spiritually? We don't know. But we just know that it happens.

And when the grain is ripe, he immediately puts in the sickle because the harvest has come. Now that has a couple of applications. So Philippians 1 .6 for the individual. I am confident of this very thing that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it at the day of Christ.

Now, of course, Paul says that to a church. So you can see that applying to the entire church. What God has started in the work that he has done in you, in this church, he will be faithful to complete it the day of Christ.

There will be more work that will be done in this church. And then you can even apply that to all the churches. To the entire kingdom of God as it is growing in this world with the spread of the gospel.

I am confident of this that he who began a good work in the church as it is growing will be faithful to complete it at the day of Christ. And it's on that day that the harvest time has come and everyone whom God had elected for salvation from before the foundation of the world will be gathered together before him in glory.

The harvest has come. So there's the application of that parable. And by the way, this parable only appears in Mark. This is a parable that is unique to Mark. You don't find it in Matthew or in Luke. Now this next one you have heard in the other gospels and you've probably even heard various forms of it.

So there are other ways that this parable has been told. But again it continues with the theme of agriculture that we're hearing in these first parables. So in verse 30 we have the parable of the mustard seed.

The Mustard Seed and the Expansion of the Kingdom

So before we had the parable of the seed that grows into a harvest, now we have the parable of a seed that grows into a tree. So Jesus was saying how shall we compare the kingdom of God or by what parable shall we present it?

So here he is again presenting another parable with regards to understanding the kingdom of God. And that really was the main focus of any of the parables that we read about in the three synoptic gospels.

There are no parables in John. So in these three gospels Jesus speaks parables so that we can understand something about the kingdom of God. There are other occasions where a parable may be pointing to something else.

But more often than not a parable is giving an illustration or a picture of the kingdom of God in some way. Now as Jesus says in the gospel of Luke, the kingdom of God is in your midst. It's right here.

So you can't see it with your eyes. You can't perceive it with your senses. Again you can see the effects of it. You can perceive the effects of it. But you don't see the kingdom of God exactly with the senses by which we experience the world.

And so Jesus is using natural explanations to help us understand spiritual things. Help us to perceive these spiritual concepts. Now a day will come when we will step into eternity. We will cross the river, as is often termed.

Or we will step beyond the veil. And we will inhabit the spiritual. And then we will be able to see and perceive things that we can't see now. For now, as said in 1 Corinthians 13, we see as through a glass darkly, but soon we will see face to face.

And so Jesus so graciously is helping us to see how the kingdom of God works in the world. How can we perceive these things with our physical limitations? And so he illustrates these things through parables.

So verse 30, or verse 31 now, it is like, the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which when sown upon the soil, though it is the smallest of all seeds that are upon the soil, yet when it is grown, it grows up and becomes the largest of all the garden plants and forms large branches.

Now there has been pushback, skeptics will criticize this particular illustration because Jesus calls the mustard seed the smallest of all seeds. And it's not the smallest of all seeds. There are smaller seeds, certainly.

But that's not what Jesus is doing here. He's not giving you a what would it be, a botany lesson? What's the study of plants? I think I got that right. It's botany. So anyway, he's not leading a botany lecture at a university or something like that.

He's just giving an illustration in such a way that people can understand it. So as far as agriculture in that area was concerned, the mustard seed was the smallest of all seeds. And it's sown upon the soil, and once again, we're talking about good seed sown in good soil, and when it is sown, it grows up and becomes the largest of all the garden plants.

He's not even saying here that it's the largest tree. It's just of all of these plants that a farmer is sowing, the mustard seed becomes the largest of everything that he sows. And so, this tree grows up and the birds of the air nest under its shade.

Now, listen to this from Ezekiel 17. I'm going to start reading here in verse 22. Thus says Lord Yahweh, I will also take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and set it out. I will pluck from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one, and I will plant it on an exalted and lofty mountain.

On the high mountain of Israel I will plant it, that it may lift up boughs and yield fruit and become a majestic cedar. And birds of every kind will dwell under its branches. They will dwell in the shade of its branches.

And all the trees of the field will know that I am Yahweh. I bring down the exalted tree, exalt the low tree. Dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I am Yahweh. I have spoken and I will do it.

That statement there in Ezekiel 17 is exactly what Jesus is quoting when he says the birds of the air will nest under its shade. And it's a fulfillment of a prophecy that was made by God through Ezekiel about how he will plant a tree on a high and lofty mountain and birds from everywhere will come and nest under its shade.

And this is talking about how God will bring saints from all over the world. There will be believers from everywhere. And that's exactly this picture of what we're getting in this particular parable. It's a small seed.

The gospel starts in a small place. The nation of Israel was even the smallest of the nations. As it's often talked about being in the Old Testament. And yet through this nation God brings forth a sprig, a branch.

It's talked about in, where is that, Isaiah 11? Where it's said that a shoot will spring forth from the stem of Jesse. And that is talking about Jesus, a descendant through the line of Jesse and David, who would come, the Messiah.

And it's through the Messiah that the whole world would be gathered to God. Those who hear of Christ and believe in the gospel and come to salvation and live. And is that not what's being talked about right here?

A fulfillment of that very thing. That when the kingdom of God, the message of the kingdom goes out, it might start small. A small nation. One man, Jesus Christ, given to these disciples. Preached first in Jerusalem and then Judea and then Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

And it becomes a huge tree where birds from everywhere come and nest under its branches. And we see the fulfillment of that very thing in the church that is growing in the world today. And lastly, at the conclusion of this, as I explained in the beginning, verses 33 and 34, with many such parables Jesus was speaking the word to them as they were able to hear it.

And he was not speaking to them without a parable, but he was explaining everything privately to his own disciples. Because, once again, to them it is given to understand the kingdom of God. But to those who are outside, it is not given to understand.

And so we can read these parables and we can be awed and wonder at the work that God is doing. These things are mysterious and awesome to us. There are others who either are not impressed by the parables, like Jesus speaking stories.

Well, Aesop did that with his fables. You know, they'll just say every religious leader has their own sort of illustrations and allegories and stuff like that that they will do. So these people are completely unimpressed by this.

Or, they will take the parables and they will apply lessons to them that Jesus did not intend. Usually moralizing it. So this is a moral lesson in some way. But Jesus is showing us something about the kingdom of God and how it is growing in the world.

And this is being accomplished by his sovereign hand and his mysterious ways through the movement of his spirit. And we continue to trust in God and be obedient to him. And so that even in our own hearts, individually, there is growth that is happening that even we cannot explain how that happens in our very lives.

But continue in Christ and he will do it. Resisting sin, growing in holiness. Consider these words. I'll close with this. That Paul said to the Thessalonians. 1 Thessalonians 5 .23. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely.

And may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he who calls you who will also do it. Heavenly Father we thank you for what we have read here today.

And though these things are divinely mysterious to us, I pray they are nonetheless things that we desire to ponder and understand. That we may come to an appreciation of the way that you work. And that we would be faithful to do those things that you have called us to.

It's by the move of the spirit in our hearts that we desire holiness when it is preached to us to be holy. That we would resist sin and walk in the ways of Christ that have been given to us. Your spirit so moves us to do so.

And I ask that you would be in our hearts today. In our minds guarding us from those things that the world would try to throw at us. To tempt us or to woo us away or discourage us. And we are strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

Which has been shown to us and sustains us. And will deliver us in the end. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Thank you for listening to When We Understand The Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry visit our website www .wutt .com. Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study, When We Understand The Text.