Small is Formidable

The Mustard Seed and Leaven in Luke 13

Amen. Church, as you're standing, please turn to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 13, and we're going to read the Word of God, again, Luke chapter 13, starting in verse 18. We're going to be reading verses 18 to 21, again, Luke 13, starting in verse 18.

Hear ye this afternoon the Word of the Lord. He said, therefore, what is the kingdom of God like, and to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air may nest in its branches.

And again, he said, to what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened. This is the Word of the Lord. You may be seated.

Let me pray to ask God's blessing over the preaching of His Word. Father, we do thank You again for today's activities. Lord, as we center our day and our day of worship around You, we are so thankful for the sweetness of Jesus, the sweetness of our brotherhood here at Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church, the sweetness of our meal together.

Lord, help us even now one more time to hear the preaching of Your Word this afternoon. As tired as we may be, as weak in the flesh as we may be, we pray for supernatural impartation of the Holy Ghost to ready our hearts and our minds for the Word that is to come.

We pray, Lord, that You would help us to have the mind of Christ in all these things and more. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Today's message this afternoon is, Small is Formidable. I've actually preached on this text of Scripture to you before.

If you were here a little over two years ago when I first came to visit you and I preached a message that was based upon this passage of Luke, it's actually one of my favorite passages in the Gospel of Luke, and you might find that surprising because it seems like an interesting passage, sure, but what's so special about it?

What sets it apart to me as a preacher as one of my favorite verses of Scripture in the Gospel of Luke? I've also preached this message at another church, the church I used to pastor in Wisconsin. When I preached this message that time, I preached on not quite the same material.

My sermon's a little bit different this time, but I had this line in there about the mustard seed because the Scripture alludes to the kingdom of God being like a mustard seed. After the service, a sister who was in the church came up to me and said, Pastor, I want you to have something.

She pulls out of her pocket the tiniest jar I've ever seen, and inside that jar, probably like this small, was even a tinier little seed, which was a mustard seed. She had a mustard seed, and I happened to be preaching that Sunday on a mustard seed.

I had never actually seen a mustard seed in person up until this point. She gave me this mustard, and it was so small, and it served as a reminder how small things can make a big impact. When she gave me that, it left an impact on me that now I'm sharing it with you six years later.

Small is formidable in the kingdom of God. Jesus says this. He said, what is the kingdom of God like? Jesus in this moment, He could have said a lot of things. He could have said, the kingdom of God is like the splendor of the empires of the world.

Think of the ancient empires for a moment, the glory and splendor of ancient Rome. There is Saint Augustine, I believe is credited as saying there are a few things he wished he could have seen. There are three things I think he wished he could have seen, Jesus, Paul's ministry, and Rome at its full glory.

The glory of Rome was incredible. One thing I like to do is I go on YouTube, and sometimes I'll put in things about the Roman Empire. There's kind of a trend on Twitter that says how men think about the Roman Empire a lot, and I'm one of those people.

I think a lot about the Roman Empire. One of the things that I do is I go on YouTube and I try to see what did ancient Rome look like, and it shows you what the ruins look like today and what it would have looked like at its glory.

Man, was it glorious. Jesus could have said the kingdom of God is like Rome in all of its glory. He could have said the kingdom of God is like Babylon in all of its glory. In the ancient world, the city of Babylon was incredible.

It had these palaces and these hanging gardens that were described in ancient sources as otherworldly. They had streams of rivers somehow actually getting up into this pyramid structure that was watering and irrigating the garden itself.

How they did these things, I don't know. Wouldn't it have been pretty cool to see the pyramids in all their glory? You know, before they were actually almost complete limestone white, and on the top of the pyramids was a gilded gold structure that was just incredible.

Now it doesn't look as glorious. Jesus could have said the kingdom of God is like a pyramid with a capstone of gold that's glorious. Jesus could have said a lot of things when posing the question, what is the kingdom of God like?

But instead, how does he answer his own question? He said, and to what should I compare it? Again, he could probably compare it to a lot of grand things. The kingdom of God is like the beauty and majesty of the stars or the moon or something that is a big celestial body.

But instead, he says, it's like a grain of a mustard seed that a man took, sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made their nests in its branches. Man, it's not what I would immediately think about when I think about God's kingdom.

Because when I think about God's kingdom, I think big. God is big. God's kingdom is huge. It's glorious. It's majesty. And in a lot of ways, the kingdom of man is almost like a mirror. It's trying to emulate God's kingdom in a way because God has implanted his image in our hearts.

And so what do we do as human beings? We aim for big things. We build big buildings. We build civilization. We build governments. All these things are innate urges that is pressing us towards the image of God because God himself is big and glorious, and he creates big and glorious things.

And yet, what shall we compare the kingdom of God to? A small little mustard seed. Again, I can't emphasize how small this is. It's almost like a grain of sand, probably a little bigger than a grain of sand.

It is tiny. But packed into that tiny seed is all this information, all this potential that once put into ground, rightly nurtured, watered, allowed for it to grow. It will grow into this huge tree where the birds of the air will be able to plant their nests there and have their life and being around the life of this tree.

God's kingdom is like a mustard seed. It starts small, and yet one day it will envelop the whole world. In Daniel's prophecy, you see very powerful imageries of the kingdom of God. One of the things that's poised in the book of Daniel, if you remember in chapter two and three in Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, you have this instance in which Nebuchadnezzar sees a tree, and in that tree has a band around it.

And that signifies, that tree signifies the kingdom of Babylon, and then this band around it signifies the remainder of its reign, and then one day that tree is cut down. And Nebuchadnezzar in his dream is wondering, what is this?

What does this mean? This is why they look for Daniel, and Daniel gives the interpretation of the dream. And what comes out of that, he says, your kingdom is about to fall. And what happens to Nebuchadnezzar?

He goes mad. But you know what comes in place of that tree is the tree of God's kingdom, which is far greater. And in fact, what Daniel seems to allude to is this tree that will fill the whole world, that all the birds of the air will come and plant their nest in it, showing that the kingdoms of man will soon come to an end.

And in Daniel chapter two, verse 44, it says that there will only be one kingdom that will be left standing at the end of human history, and it will be God's kingdom. God's kingdom is like this huge tree that it takes over the world, but how does it start?

It starts with the little seed and potential of a mustard seed, something that's tiny, almost insignificant. If you were to see it, it wouldn't catch your attention. And yet, that's the power of God's kingdom as it was breaking into the world through Jesus Christ.

You see, Jesus Christ started a movement. This movement started with only 12 disciples. You'd be hard-pressed to find a group of 12 people who could change the world today. And yet, 2 ,000 years ago, Jesus picked the most ragtag group of people you could possibly imagine.

Simon, who was a fisherman, Luke, who was a physician. You have doctors, you have fishermen, you have a carpenter, you have all these people from all various backgrounds coming together to form a movement that would change the world.

So much so that by the time we get to the book of Acts, the charge is leveled against the Christians by the Roman authorities is that these people are trying to turn the world upside down. And certainly, that is the result of history.

The church has changed the world. The world has been flipped upside down, and I think today we need a reminder that the world needs another flipping, amen? The world needs to be flipped upside down once more.

How do we do so? How do we here at Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church contribute to this magnificent work of filling the whole world with the knowledge of the Lord, filling the whole world with the gospel of Jesus Christ?

It seems like it's too much for one people, for one group. How can we do so? Do not forsake humble, small beginnings. Do not forsake the fact that in God's economy, in God's kingdom, small is formidable.

Small things have the potential to become big things for God's glory and for His kingdom. One of the reasons why I love this passage is because at the center of Jesus' teaching is the kingdom of God. When you ask yourself, what is the centerpiece of Christ's ministry and of His teaching, it centers around God's kingdom.

Jesus is singularly focused on preaching, proclaiming, making known God's kingdom. Why? Because He is in Himself the king of that kingdom, and His kingdom was breaking into the world, and that's what the gospel of Luke is all about.

It's God's kingdom breaking into the world through Jesus Christ. That is the metanarrative of Luke's gospel in particular. In the backdrop of that, remember the time this was written and received by the Christians, was you have in reality this huge empire ruling the world, the Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire is dominating, and there's no rival to it. In fact, there was never any rival to it. The way it fell was because of internal issues. Sound familiar? No one could rival the military might of Rome.

What weakened it was its own political, social, and economic woes and troubles that were coming from within. That's what led to Rome's collapse, and yet nothing could stand against them militarily, but God's kingdom that was coming into the world through Jesus Christ was laying the foundation for a new type of kingdom, for a new type of citizen, for a new type of people, and God's kingdom stands today, and where is the Roman Empire?

It is in the heap of history. God's kingdom overcame Rome. God's kingdom overcame the Byzantine Empire. God's kingdom overcame the Islamic Empire. It overcame the Ottoman Empire. It overcame the British Empire, and stand assured, it will stand above even the American Empire.

God's kingdom will be the only kingdom left standing at the end of human history. It's the only kingdom that can solve mankind's problems. This is why I love this text of Scripture, because this kingdom that will one day rule the world starts with a mustard seed.

It starts with the small things of life. Notice again how Jesus compares it. He says, it's like a grain of mustard seed that a man took, sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air make their nests in its branches.

Then he goes on to say this, and again he said, to what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened. Here are some principles that I want you to take away from today's sermon.

Again, I don't have an insert for you this afternoon, but you can write this in your notes or follow along as best as you can. The first principle is actually what is the name of today's sermon, and it's again that small is formidable in the kingdom of God.

The question that should be raised is this, why would Jesus describe his kingdom as such a small and insignificant seed, and it's for this reason, to demonstrate that smallness has great potential. Smallness has great potential.

That has a lot of implication, not just for our movement as a worldwide movement of Christians who adhere to the Bible, but also as individuals. Don't overlook your own potential. You might be wondering and saying to yourself, I'm just one person.

How can I do X, Y, and Z? How can I do something for God's glory? How can I do something in the Christian ministry? How can I do this at work? How can I progress in this area of life? I'm just one person.

I'm not learned, I'm not smart enough, I'm not good looking enough, I'm not all these things. Of course, none of those things apply to me, but we can ask ourselves all these litany of questions and say, how can I do this?

Small is formidable. Don't negate that all great things start under small circumstances. Think of one of the greatest companies in the world today, Apple. Where did it start? Was it in some ragtag town around here called, what, Palo Alto, was it?

Or Cupertino? Where was it that Apple started? In Cupertino? I think it was in Palo Alto is where he lived, right? Where Steve Jobs lived in Palo Alto, and in his stepdad's garage is where he started to, where Steve Wozniak started making this revolutionary technology that would change the world.

Small, humble beginnings. You can even go to his house today, or drive by it, and I think at some point they were maybe doing tours, and see the humble beginnings of Apple. Again, something great came out of something small.

Not only is it true in the entrepreneurial capitalist system that we live in, where one who starts with humble, small beginnings can make something great, but it's true even more so spiritually, brothers and sisters.

Again, we talk about the early disciples. These were a ragtag group of disciples who could barely, barely hold things together when Jesus was around. When Jesus was around and he was suffering persecution about to go to the cross, what did they do?

They all scattered. They were afraid for their lives. They didn't know how they would be able to keep this movement going afterwards, but what changed everything fundamentally was that this Jesus, who had just been crucified, who had just been put in a tomb, he was raised on the third day, and that changed everything so that the 12 became 120 50 days later, and then on that same day of Pentecost, 120 became 3 ,000.

A couple days after that, they became 5 ,000, and then they became a movement that took over the world. God is in the small details of life. God loves to use the small in order to make big statements.

It's prophesied in Isaiah chapter 60 that he will take the small and make them as numerable as the sands of the sea and as the stars of the sky, and that he will make a great nation out of that which is small.

Indeed, we are part of that great nation. We are part of that great crowd of witnesses that's referred to in Revelation chapter 7 where there's a throng before the presence of God of people of all tribes, nation, tongues, languages, kindreds, and that they all serve and sing to the Lamb and to God to whom belongs salvation.

God begins to move in the small things of life. Smallness, weakness, and meekness are spiritual currencies in God's economy. God loves to use the small, weak, meek, and insignificant things to change the world.

So if you ask yourself personally, spiritually, in business, in life, I'm too small. Well, good. God can use the small in order to do big things. The second principle I want you to walk away with from today's teaching is this.

In the kingdom of God, uninvested faith is desertion. How do we arrive to that idea? Focus on what it says in verse 19 for a moment. The seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, that's what the kingdom of God is like.

The kingdom of God is not like a seed that fell into the soil. The kingdom of God is not like a seed that fell from a tree. The kingdom of God is like a seed that a man took and sowed in his garden. A seed needs a farmer.

Jesus did not identify the potential of the seed apart from the effort of the laborer. Okay? He did not separate the two. A seed needs a farmer. So our faith needs constant cultivation and attention in order to reap the fruit and the benefit that comes with it.

A good farmer invests in his crop or his lack of investment becomes desertion. The same is true of our Christian faith and of our walk with the Lord Jesus Christ. If you take your Christianity seriously, you read your Bible, you pray, you'll reap the blessing and the benefits of a life that is committed to the gospel.

But if you hear this gospel and you do not commit to it, and you don't invest in it, and you don't invest in your walk, in your life, in spiritual things, then that uninvested faith becomes desertion and it will bear no fruit.

It will bear no fruit. We must live out biblical stewardship. And the principle here is one of stewardship, beloved. As Christians, we're all part of God's kingdom and we all have a sacred kingdom assignment of obedience.

And so we have to live out biblical stewardship by walking by faith and not by sight because seldom are we given the full picture when God calls us to an assignment. When God calls us to an assignment, when God calls us to obedience, we don't always have the full picture and that's when it becomes scary.

I can tell you that's my life right now. I'm scared of the next three to six months. I don't know what lies ahead, but I'm excited because I know God is in the details. I know God is sovereign. And so when you're confronted with life, when you're confronted about the future of your life, this church ministry, be excited.

God is in the small details. And so we must continue to invest our faith, invest in our faith by being faithfully engaged in prayer, faithfully engaged in daily Bible reading, not forsaking the gathering of the saints on the Lord's Day.

And we have to continue to participate in the Great Commission work. Now, these are not works that we do for our salvation, but instead these are the fruit of our salvation because we are called to do this great kingdom work as we are saved by grace through faith, we've been saved onto good works.

And so remember, in the kingdom of God, an uninvested faith is desertion. Don't be a spectator in the kingdom of God. We just had the Super Bowl and around the Super Bowl time, I was traveling and I had a layover in Las Vegas where the Super Bowl was.

And in Vegas, they had these jackets for like the 49ers and it was like $300, okay? Some people would actually buy those things and it was not a great quality jacket. I mean, one thing would be if it was a good quality jacket, it just had the name of the 49ers slapped on them.

And there are some people who would buy these things, they'll put them on, they'd go to the event, they would see their teams and they would cheer and jeer one side or the other and they feel that in some way they are participating and that if their team wins, they say all together in unison, we won.

You did not play. You did not win. You watched the winners win, but you are a loser sitting in the pews. Don't be a loser. Don't be a loser who just sits in the pews, brothers and sisters. Christianity is not a spectator sport.

This is a work assignment, a kingdom that requires your full dedication and participation. Amen? The next thing I want you to recognize, this third principle, is that in God's kingdom, influence is viral.

I know that's a weird way of saying it, but we live in the 21st century, we live in a society of social media, we live in a place where things go viral on the internet. Notice, again, what Jesus says in verse 21 when he asks the question, what should he compare the kingdom of God to?

He says, it's like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened. What does yeast or leaven do? Leaven or yeast during the time of Jesus looked a little different than what you may envision today, actually.

It wasn't an ingredient that was kept separate for later use. Instead, it was the dough that already had activated yeast. It was infected dough, and it would infect everything it came into contact with.

You see, yeast is a funny thing. It can appear to be virtually invisible, innocuous, yet it radically transforms everything it comes in contact with. What a perfect way, then, to envision what the transformational power of the gospel of the kingdom does in our lives.

You see, we don't need Jesus to come down from heaven to prove anything to us. We accept Jesus by faith, and it is an inward work of regeneration. God's Holy Spirit does a work in us. There's not a light that comes down and shines on us from heaven.

There's not this huge fanfare that may happen at your conversion. It's very simple. It's private. The transformation happens in your heart. No one can see the outward effect of it, and yet that which is innocuous, that which seems invisible, changes everything.

That's the power of the gospel. It transforms everything it comes into touch and contact with. You see, we can't always perceive what God is doing and how he's working our lives until oftentimes we have to look back and see the fruit of transformation.

Jesus uses the ordinary, the unassuming, to accomplish the extraordinary. In other words, in the kingdom of God, influence, godly influence, the influence of the Holy Spirit is viral. An example of this, as I mentioned earlier in my morning sermon, I was an addiction counselor for many years, and it's often time where one of the guys who would come out of addictions would have a powerful transformation.

And all of his other buddies who were addicts along with him, they'd begin to wonder, okay, what happened to you? There's something different about you. You don't act the same, you don't look the same, you don't behave the same, you don't talk the same.

Something has fundamentally shifted in your life. What is it? And that's the viral influence of the gospel in the lives of believers. Isn't it true? Maybe you have a similar experience where people knew who you were before you were a Christian.

And now when they speak to you, now when they see you, they say, hey, something is different about you. You aren't the same person. You aren't who you used to be. What changed? And there you have the wonderful opportunity to share what changed you.

It was the gospel of Jesus. Jesus changes everything. So church, I want you to know this. Because God desires for you to be a formidable force for His kingdom. Though ye be small, God desires great and lofty things to come out of you.

The Lord wants you to invest in your most holy faith that you may be strong for the task that's ahead. God is calling you today, beloved, to be a great commission-focused church where the fills this land.

Then may He richly bless us all as we live for Him, as we proclaim Him, and we proclaim His eternal kingdom and dominion until we enter that world without end. Amen. Let me pray. Father, we thank You for this kingdom faith.

We thank You that You have given us this little seed, the seed of a mustard seed, small yet mighty, packed with potential. Lord, let us not waste the potential You've given us, whether it be in the kingdom of God or even in the gift and talents and resources that You've given us.

Let us make much of what You've blessed us with. Help us, Father, not to negate or forsake that which is small, that which has humble beginnings. Help us, Lord, not to have an uninvested faith which is desertion, but instead, Lord, help us to have this leaven-like faith that becomes viral and touches and changes everything that it comes into touch and contact with.

Lord, may Your gospel do such a thing in our lives and in our church, in our families, in our homes. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.