The Gospel Wins In History

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Matthew 13 is home to some of the most popular parables of Jesus, some of the most well -known.

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And there are some short ones and punchy ones, and I think some parables too, in particular we're going to talk about today, that are often misunderstood and it seems as though the commentators don't want

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Jesus to have said what he said, as my friend says. So, Matthew 13, it's a significant passage, there's a lot here, and so let's get into it, let's unpack it.

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Matthew chapter 13, and let's actually start in verse 18.

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I'm going to move from verse 18 down, there's a reason why, because there's some context here about something

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Jesus says in the parable of today, that I think that will help with. So, here we go. Matthew chapter 13, verse 18, hear now the words of the living and true

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God. Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart.

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This is what was sown along the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.

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As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.

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As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields in one case a hundredfold, and another sixty, and another thirty.

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He 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.

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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,

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Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then doesn't have weeds? He said to them, an enemy has done this.

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So the servants said to him, then do you want us to go and gather them? But he said, no less than gathering the weeds, you root up the weed along with them.

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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 weed into my barn.

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Here it is. 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.

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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 nest in its branches.

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He told them another parable, the kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hidden three measures of flour till it was all leavened.

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All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables, indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet.

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I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the word, thus far as the reading of God's word.

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Let's pray together. Father, God, I need you, Father, to teach today by your spirit, where we call upon you to get the speaker out of the way,

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God, we call upon you to bless us with understanding, help us to see and to understand and to believe, and God, please guard us from error.

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Help us, God, to be filled with the hope that we have for the future, that God, you are the one who sows, who ultimately is bringing about the fruit, and you are the one that's going to fill the world with the leaven of the gospel, and God, please help us,

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Lord, to be changed by this. Most of all, God, please change us through these parables that we read about today, and please,

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Lord, cause me to decrease in Christ, to increase in Jesus' name, amen. So much to say, these parables, those last two we heard from there of the mustard seed coming into a tree, the birds of the air nesting in the branches, and the leaven and the lump of dough permeating the entire loaf.

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It does something to change you. If you can't see that, then hopefully at the end of today's message, you'll see that these parables ought to change your entire perspective on the future of the gospel and the world, the kingdom of God, the church, the success of the gospel, but also in terms of God's pattern and how

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He does things in the world. He does it with insignificant things. He does it with small things that become very large things.

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He makes the insignificant significant. He takes something that's not mighty and He makes it mighty.

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That's what God does. That's His pattern in the world. And these parables about the kingdom are not cryptic, strange things that really have no relevance or bearing on your life.

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I want to say this. If you're in Christ now, you are fulfillment of the parable we just read, that seed becoming a large tree.

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You are fulfillment of it. And if you're in Christ today, you ought to see in these parables that God's pattern for the kingdom of God in the world is to take very small things and grow them into large trees.

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That's what God does. And I want to say that I know we don't like that.

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We want the thing to drop, right? Let it fall from the sky. As a matter of fact, I would say there is a dominant version of eschatology today.

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It's the eschatology of the moment. It wasn't always this way. As a matter of fact, when

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America first began, the dominant eschatology was ours. Our eschatology, a view of the future where Jesus wins everything.

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He rules over every single realm. There's nothing that's going to be untouched by His lordship. Jesus wins in history.

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But the prominent eschatology of the day, the kind of thing you read about in Left Behind series, the

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Tim LaHaye version of the future, the Hal Lindsey version of the future, the prominent eschatology of the day doesn't want

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Jesus to have said this. Doesn't want Jesus to have said this, that we have this thing that starts very small and ends up growing very, very large.

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We have this leaven that ends up permeating the entirety of the loaf. It fills the entire thing.

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That sounds like success. That sounds like giant success. That sounds like nothing's going to be left untouched by Jesus' rule and reign.

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Yet, we want the thing to drop, right? We want that kingdom to just come down and obliterate history.

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And that is, by the way, the popular dominant view of the moment, right? Some people say Jesus tried to bring the kingdom, and because the

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Jews of His day rejected it, Jesus wasn't able to bring the kingdom. And so what that means is the kingdom is on hold.

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There's this little gap we're in right now where the kingdom is put on hold. And what's going to happen is, is after a lot of destruction and mayhem and a lot of degradation and a lot of decay,

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Jesus is going to finally swoop back in in history. He's going to rescue the church, and He's going to come, and He's going to bring

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His kingdom, and it's going to obliterate everything. It's going to drop, bam, iron fist.

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He's going to rule within the world, and that's the view. And because that's what we want, we don't want to wait. The Jews didn't want to wait either.

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They didn't want to wait. Jesus comes in. He is this lowly son of Joseph and Mary, adopted by Joseph, literal son of Mary.

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He comes from Nazareth, this nothing little town. They don't have a large budget. They don't have a lot of money.

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They're struggling to make things work. It sounds a lot like apologia, but... So they're moving into this whole thing with Jesus, and they see

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Him, and they say, what's significant about you? I mean, Jesus comes into the world looking a lot like a mustard seed, right?

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Insignificant, barely see it in your hand, and they didn't like that about Jesus. It's what bothered them,

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I think. Maybe for some of them, most of them, it's what bothered them the most about Jesus.

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This is not what we expected. I read in my Bible that it says in Isaiah 9, 6 through 7, that it's

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El Gibor, the mighty God, the father of eternity, of the increase of His government and of peace.

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There will be no ends on the throne of David to establish it with justice and righteousness forevermore.

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The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. I see Isaiah chapter 2, that all the nations stream up to the mountain of God, and the law of God, the

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Torah, goes forth from Zion. Now, Isaiah chapter 11, that He's a signal for the nations.

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Psalm 22, that all the families of the earth are going to return to worship the Lord. Psalm chapter 2, ask of me, the

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Father says to Jesus, and I'll give you the nations for your inheritance, the very ends of the earth for your possession.

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Psalm 72, He shall have dominion from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth.

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Psalm 1101, the Lord said unto my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.

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They know that. They got their Bibles. They've been to Jewish Awanas and the synagogue, they know it all.

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They got it memorized, right? It's in their hearts. And now here comes Jesus. That's the

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King of the world. This is the one that's going to establish justice, who's not going to stop. He's not going to faint or grow weary until He establishes justice in the earth.

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The coastlands waiting for His law, and it's Jesus of Nazareth. Are you the

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King? He says, I told you. Right? Tell us, how long are you going to keep us in suspense if you're the

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Messiah? Say so. He says, I told you, and the reason you can't hear me is because you're not of my sheep.

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My sheep hear my voice, and they come. I give them eternal life, and nothing can snatch them from my hand.

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Jesus does not fit the bill according to their own presuppositions, right?

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Because why? Because they see Jesus, they're like, you're the Messiah? You're telling tales out of the schoolyard.

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There's no way you're the Messiah. Why? Well, if you're the Messiah, then why are we still under the boot of Rome? Why are we being ruled by Caesar?

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Why? Right? How could you possibly ... How are you the Messiah when

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Caesar still reigns on his throne? You're supposed to have a throne where you conquer the whole world with salvation and redemption.

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How are you the Messiah? That can't be possible, because they couldn't understand that God works

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His kingdom into the world like leaven in a lump of dough. He works His kingdom into the world by death that comes to life.

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He works His kingdom into the world in mustard seed kinds of way that you could barely see in your hands, but it turns into a giant tree before you even realize it.

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You can't hear the tinkering. You can't hear the working, right? Like if you're sitting next to a lump of dough that's been leavened, you can't hang out next to that lump of dough and hear the hammers banging, the nails being hit.

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You can't hear the saw blades moving back and forth. You can't hear the construction workers and the beeping and the sound.

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You can't hear the building, right? It just happens, but when it happens, it permeates the entirety of the loaf, right?

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You don't just go back checking on it when it's not fully completed yet saying, well, I guess it's not working.

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You have to give it time. It's working its way through the loaf, and we don't like the idea we never have of waiting on God.

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We don't like the idea of having God be the sovereign over the leaven. We don't like the idea of God being the sovereign over the growth of that seed into a tree.

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We'd rather just have trees plopped into place. As a matter of fact, that's what we do today, right?

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Long time ago, what'd you do? You had to get seeds. You had to till the ground. You had to put stuff in. Be patient.

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Water. You had to wait, right? And you had to just wait until it did what it did. Now we're like, where's the local nursery, right?

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Let me go buy some trees that are already made. I'll plant those. Let me go get the stuff that's already in position.

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I'm going to plant those. By the way, that's what I do. Confession, right? I said, oh, it's Arizona. I want some peach trees and apple trees.

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I'm dreaming, right? Like, yeah, right. Okay. And I'm like, I got this desert landscape here. I'm going to make it work, right?

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And so I dug things up, and I went and I bought pre -grown trees, right? Put them all in the ground and covered them all up.

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I have no idea what I'm doing. And so they all died, right? But that's what we want. I want the thing to just be there.

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I was like, I got like, oh, I want a garden in my backyard, right? Fantastic. So what did

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I do? I went and I just plopped all the trees already made into my ground, right?

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Because I'd rather have that. I don't want to wait for it. And that's what we're like. The Jews of Jesus' day, many of the

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Christians of today. I want the kingdom to drop out of heaven from the sky and obliterate everything, and then everything's done.

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And then Jesus contradicts that. He says, it's a mustard seed that becomes a large tree, and the birds of the air nest in its branches.

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It's like leaven in a lump of dough. It permeates the entirety of the loaf. You see, the Old Testament expectation was the kingdom was going to come into the world and bring forgiveness and salvation,

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Jew and Gentile together, worship of God taking place all over the world.

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Now Jesus comes into that context, and they're expecting it, and he says, the kingdom of God is like this, insignificant to large growth, leaven, lump of dough.

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That's what it's like. And so that's the background, and we have to ask the question, is this new?

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Is Jesus shocking us? He walks into the world, he's already surprising them because they're only reading parts of their

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Old Testament and not the whole story. They're missing the portions about the passion of the Messiah, the death of the

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Messiah, the resurrection of the Messiah. They're missing it. But is Jesus coming in with a novel interpretation of how the kingdom works?

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Is it something ultimately new that they should have gone, oh, it's not like I thought.

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It's not slow growth to large, fruitful end. It's something different.

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No, actually it's the Old Testament pattern. It's how the Bible said the kingdom was coming in the world. I want you to go to the text, two texts to start with.

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Daniel 2. Go left in your Bible. Daniel chapter 2. Daniel chapter 2 is one instance of the

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Old Testament revelation, something written hundreds of years before Jesus comes into the world in his earthly ministry.

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And this is one of those snapshots ahead of time of what the kingdom would look like. Here it is.

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Daniel chapter 2, verse 36. Daniel is given a dream to interpret.

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And so now he gives the interpretation of the dream. I can't give you the full exposition today. I'm just going to read it so you see the expectation.

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Here we are from the ESV, Daniel 2 .36. This was the dream. Now, you will tell the king its interpretation.

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You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, and into whose hand he has given wherever they dwell the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all.

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You're the head of gold. He's interpreting the dream. Another kingdom inferior to you shall rise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which you shall rule over the earth.

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And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these.

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And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, should be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay.

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And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle, as you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together.

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And as iron does not mix with clay, here we go. And in the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people.

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It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever. Just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold, a great

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God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.

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Why quote that? Here it is. Daniel tells the king, long before Jesus comes, you had a dream.

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God gave you the dream. Here's what the dream means. I'm going to interpret it for you. There's going to be four kingdoms, and it's during the time of the fourth kingdom that God himself will establish a kingdom that will last forever.

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It will never end. You notice how it's described. It's described like this stone, this insignificant little thing that comes into the world, and it ends up obliterating everything and becoming this kingdom, a rule that stands forever, and nothing ever ends it.

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Here's these earthly kingdoms, Babylon, the Medo -Persians, the

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Greeks, the Romans. It happened just like Daniel said, and it was in that context, the time of the fourth kingdom, that Jesus enters with his kingdom, and it's a kingdom that's never been destroyed.

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Two thousand years of history of God's people, the kingdom of God, ruling and reigning.

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Jesus is ruling and reigning in the world, and he's filling the earth up with eleven of his gospel, expanding the borders of his kingdom all over the world, but it starts like this little stone.

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The text actually says that the stone becomes a mountain, and it fills the entire earth.

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We go from this little rock, this little rock that's insignificant and nothing, and it ends up filling the earth and becoming this mountain, this huge thing.

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It was insignificant to significant. It was small to large. That was the expectation.

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But I'm going to give you another one. There's another passage. Now, I don't have time to explain all the details.

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I just want to show you that this was the expectation. Ezekiel chapter 47,

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Ezekiel 47, and again, I wish we could spend time here. I'm just going to scrape the surface of this so you see this was expectation.

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Now, Ezekiel gets this vision of the future temple. Now, we know from Scripture that's not a literal earthly temple.

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Jesus is the new covenant temple, right? But I want you to see this imagery, this vision of the new covenant temple that Ezekiel paints.

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He says that there are, listen, waters flowing out of the temple, and if you read the book of Revelation, those are the waters of life coming out of the new

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Jerusalem to fill the whole world. And listen to the call in Revelation. I just want to tell you what it says.

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It says, come and drink. Come. If you're thirsty, come drink from the waters of life.

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It says that from the city, the new Jerusalem, not the old one that's been destroyed, not the old one, not the harlot wife, not that one, but from the new

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Jerusalem, it says Jesus bride. It says the waters of life flow, and there's an invitation, come drink to the world.

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It says in the city are the saved ones, and outside of the city are the unsaved ones, but that water is coming, and it says come drink.

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Now Ezekiel has a particular vision, and I want you to see the gradual nature that moves into fully encompassing the world, and here it is,

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Ezekiel chapter 47. Now watch.

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Here we go. We'll start in, okay, three, verse three. Going on eastward with a measuring line at his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits and then led me through the water, and it was ankle deep.

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How deep? So he's going out now into this water, right, and this guy goes out, and the water is only ankle deep.

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Again he measured a thousand and led me through the water, and it was knee deep.

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Again he measured a thousand and led me through the water, and it was waist deep. Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through for the water had risen.

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It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through, and he said to me, son of man, have you seen this?

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And so the vision coming out of this new covenant temple is the water comes out, the waters of life come out, and it starts off, it's only ankle deep, and it gets a little further out, and it's knee deep, and a little further out, and now it's waist deep, and it gets to the point where it's swimmable, it's encompassing everything.

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That's how this looks in this vision of the future for Ezekiel, and this water of life flowing out.

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So we've got a stone that becomes a mountain. We've got water that gradually fills to the point where you're just engulfed in this river.

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That was the Old Testament expectation, and Jesus comes in in the same line. He says, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven is like this, a mustard seed, and it becomes this large tree, and the birds of the air nest in its branches.

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Now let's do this real fast. If you go to... I want you to keep a finger in Matthew 13, and let's just explain a quick bit on the background.

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Okay? So Matthew 13, I'll read the parable. 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.

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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.

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Let's start with the seed, shall we? The seed. Now, I just want to say, being an atheist dramatically impacts, apparently, your ability to read the

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Bible. For some reason, it dramatically impacts your ability to not only read the

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Bible, but to read the Bible in context, its historical context. So, atheists have lots and lots of chestnut arguments, especially internet atheists.

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They have lots of chestnut arguments they like to throw out at Christians to try to lop their heads off. One very popular argument against the

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Scriptures given by atheists today, who apparently, again, have a hard time reading the Bible like they would any other document in history, they'll say things like this, is

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Jesus God? And we say what? You better believe He is. They'll say, does

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Jesus know everything perfectly? Our answer is what? Yes.

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Now, of course, we all say that when Jesus humbled Himself and became a man, a servant, and humbled

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Himself to the obedience of death, Philippians chapter 2, He made Himself of no reputation.

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And of course, there were attributes of Jesus that were veiled during His earthly ministry as a man that He voluntarily submitted to, right?

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However, can God make a mistake? No. Can God sin?

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No. Can God have an error? No. An error of judgment? No. An error about the universe?

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No. Now, the atheist says, okay, great, granted He's God, and He can't make an error.

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So then they'll say, I'll prove to you that Jesus is not God. You say, okay, give me your best.

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And they say, Jesus said in Matthew 13 that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds.

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Ha -ha! Jesus didn't know that there are other seeds smaller than the mustard seed.

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Therefore, Jesus is obviously wrong, not God. Your Bible is a fiction.

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It's mythology. It's man -made. Now, the first question I ask the atheist is,

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A, why does that matter, given that your ancestors were bacteria? That's A.

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B, I ask the atheist, Do you read historic documents in the same way you just read the

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Bible? Because Jesus is a Jewish Messiah, amen?

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Yes. Jesus is a Jew in the first century, amen? And in the

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Mishnah, there is a listing of seeds.

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There is a seed list of kosher seeds. Do you want to know what the smallest seed in the list is?

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It's a mustard seed. So Jesus, who's a first century

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Palestinian Jew, knows what the listing is of kosher seeds according to their law, and the mustard seed was in there as the smallest of the cultivated seeds.

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So when Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, is talking to Jewish followers, he says to them, the mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, when it's planted, becomes a giant tree that's bigger than a man.

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Now, what's interesting to talk about in terms of the seed itself, Jesus says in John chapter 12 verse 24.

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John chapter 12 verse 24, "'Truly, truly,

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I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

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Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.'"

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Jesus says this is the pattern of a seed. This is the pattern. Seeds have to first die to come to life.

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And so Jesus, apparently in the parables, the sower is the son of man, it's Jesus.

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And when the seed goes into the earth, it first has to die, and then it comes to life.

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And so Jesus shows the word of the kingdom is like a seed, it has to die to come to life.

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And then Jesus shows us that he is not only giving us a parable of how seeds work and how his kingdom works, but he even goes into that pattern himself and demonstrates it with his own life.

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He becomes like that seed that dies and rises again. And Jesus calls us to follow him in that pattern.

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The kingdom of God is like a seed, small and significant, it must die to rise again and be given new life.

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And Jesus says, you must come and you must die and rise again like little seeds.

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And Jesus shows us he's the premier example of going to die and rise again.

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Jesus gives us a pattern for the working of the kingdom that is dying and rising again.

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So listen, it shouldn't shock us, brothers and sisters, listen, it can't shock you.

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It can't startle you. It ought to not startle you as a Christian. When you labor in the world for the glory of God and the kingdom of God, and it comes with death, and it comes with pain, and it comes with insignificance and smallness, that's the pattern.

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If you say, Pastor Jeff, I'm laboring for the kingdom, I'm doing these things for the kingdom and it seems so insignificant, it just feels like I'm dying, it feels like nothing's being accomplished, it looks so small.

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I would say, praise God, you're winning. That's how God does this.

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Don't despise the day of small beginnings. The way the kingdom of God works in the world is it works through death that comes to life.

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It works through seeds, small seeds that look like they have no power, nothing to accomplish

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God's purpose, and then they do. How do you know that God is in this?

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Well, because there's absolutely nothing in you that can accomplish it. How do you know

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God's in it? Because it looks like a lot of death. How do you know that God's in it? Because it looks so insignificant and small, it looks like we are unworthy, incapable, not strong, not able at all.

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And that's how you know God's in it, because that's the pattern of God's kingdom.

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It's seeds that become large trees. It's dying to living.

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And it's amazing when you look at the history of God's kingdom in the world. Follow me on this.

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We are the beneficiaries of the death and life and the labor of believers long before us.

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And if you look at the history of the church, all of our heroes, many times our heroes, the great ones of the faith, in their day, they were seen as the antagonists.

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In their day, they were seen as the troublemakers. They really were. And those people and their ministries that we see today as giants, in their day, it looked many times like they were losing.

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I could give you so many examples. Here's a great one. I want you to get to know him, so I'm going to tell you about him.

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George Whitefield. He's one of the great preachers of the last 2 ,000 years of history.

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He preached over 18 ,000 times in his life, over 18 ,000 times.

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I told you before that he literally preached himself to death. The day that he died, he wasn't feeling well, he was ill.

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And he preached that day, and he was staying in somebody's house, and they had guests there. And on his way up the stairs, super ill, he stopped and turned around on the stairs, and he preached to the people who were there for a long period of time, and he went up to his bed and died.

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He just preached, and preached, and preached, and we say, oh, the Great Awakening, George Whitefield, the giant of the faith,

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George Whitefield changed the world through the gospel. And the answer is, yeah, he really did. The Great Awakening brought the light of the gospel in America, and in England, God did huge things through George Whitefield's preaching.

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But you know what? In his day, George Whitefield was seen as a troublemaker. People say,

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George Whitefield, do you know what he did? He went out into fields, and there were literally 10 ,000 people that came to listen to him preach, and there was no amplification.

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There's no microphone. There's nothing to broadcast his voice. He just stood there in a field, and he preached the gospel.

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And he said, repent and believe, and he says, you must be born again. You got to check your heart to see if you've been raised in newness of life.

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And the amazing thing is that George Whitefield started in England, and he was a pretty popular preacher in England.

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He was pretty well known. And then he went over to the United States. He went over to the colonies, preached the gospel there.

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He did some work there. He was big into orphanages, huge into orphanages.

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And then he came back to England about five years past. Listen, five years, five years.

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And when he got back to England, he had seen that now the churches had moved away from this really solid preaching to now they're preaching like self -help messages, your best life now, how to be a better dad, right?

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And friends with benefits. You guys have seen the billboard, right?

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Right? We teach these sort of topical, you know, make your life better with Jesus, you know, be a cooler

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Christian, you know, whatever they are. And that's how the preaching was in England. And so Whitefield gets back to that, and now he starts preaching the hard truth of God, and the ministers in England said this is too rough, too serrated edge, get out.

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And so, yeah, George Whitefield was in the fields preaching the gospel to thousands.

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Why? Because the institutional church said, get out. You're a troublemaker.

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You shouldn't be here. Don't do what you're doing. And so he preached the gospel in the fields to the people who would come and listen to him because there was so much perverse preaching going on in the churches.

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And so, yeah, George Whitefield, God used to bring about the great awakening. Yes, He did. But George Whitefield was seen in his days as a godly troublemaker.

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He was seen really actually as a troublemaker, and he used to preach the gospel, listen, as boats were crossing the ocean.

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To get back and forth from England to the U .S., they used to bring the boats together and tie them up just to sit and listen to George Whitefield preach.

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We look at his life and his history, and we say, praise God for men like George Whitefield, and we say, yeah, praise

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God. But in his day, he was a seed that needed to die. In his day, he wasn't seen as, we love

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George Whitefield. It's my friend Doug Wilson that says, we love, we love our dead heroes and troublemakers and our living conformists, right?

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We love our giants like John the Baptist, right? I love John the Baptist. He's a giant.

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No, you don't, if he's living next door to you, right? I love

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George Whitefield, right? Oh, the guy that the church kicked out into the fields?

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I love Jonathan Edwards, sinners in the hands of an angry God. Yeah, real popular sermon today.

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You see, we love, again, our living conformists and our dead troublemakers.

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Why? Why? Because they're safe back there. They're safe there. That's why we like them.

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We build monuments to the troublemakers, but we love the modern conformists.

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And I, of course, I borrowed all of that from my friend Doug Wilson, because I think it's powerful in terms of how you think about the kingdom of God, a seed that becomes a massive tree.

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Now, think and consider, Jesus says, it's the smallest of all seeds. Seeds must first go to die and then come to life.

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But Jesus says, when this tree grows, it becomes larger than the other plants.

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And these trees, these mustard trees, can become the size of a man. It was nothing.

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Just consider, just think, the history of our faith, the kingdom of God in the world, started with 11 very confused disciples.

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There was 12, and then we lost one. It's 11 very confused disciples, and the day of Pentecost, it wasn't a massive auditorium filling these people.

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Everybody had fled and abandoned Jesus. It's a small huddle. It looks like they failed.

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It looks like Jesus failed, but that seed went into the ground, and it came back to life again, and it began to bear fruits.

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All of Rome, this massive empire with so much power, was completely turned on its head by a movement that started like a mustard seed.

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The emperors never saw it coming. When Constantine accepted

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Christianity as the formal religion of Rome and no longer the religion elicita, no longer the religion that is banned, it must have been a big moment because listen, people came to this big celebration they threw.

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People came to the celebration they threw when Christianity moved from where it was to where Constantine put it.

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People came to this thing that were maimed, missing hands, marks and cuts all over their bodies, and now you've got the formal religion of Rome, the faith of Jesus, and it came from a mustard seed to a large tree.

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That's how God works in the world. If we say, my life looks like a failure, my life looks insignificant and small,

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I don't have a lot of abilities and skills and power, I would say, congratulations, you're doing it right.

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Those are the kinds of people that God uses. I'm not saying you shouldn't train yourself. I'm not saying you shouldn't dedicate yourself to getting better at what you do.

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I'm saying that if you recognize your own insignificance, well, you're very much like a mustard seed.

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It sounds like God can use you. Jesus says mustard seed to large tree.

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It's insignificant. You can barely see it, and it ends up becoming a tree. Now just quickly,

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I'm going to go through this rather quickly. There are two sections of Scripture that I think we should point to to say, what does

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Jesus mean by birds in the branches? And I'll just point you to them. Daniel chapter 4,

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Ezekiel 31 6. Now go read those later. I think that should give us some clues about the birds, and I'll just point to the one passage.

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In Daniel chapter 4, when Nebuchadnezzar is talking about his kingdom, he uses terminology of a tree where the beasts rest under its branches to get shade, and the birds of the air nest in the branches.

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And the descriptions he's giving are descriptions that describe a prosperous and victorious kingdom.

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So I think that Jesus describes birds coming into the branches, and I think there's an element to it that describes the prosperous and victorious nature of the kingdom.

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However, I truly believe that there's an element here we can't miss, and it's in the very text before us.

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Remember the other parable? Jesus says, the sower sows the seeds, and some go on rocky ground.

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He talks about thorns. He talks about the sun scorching the seed. But then he describes one other seed.

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What comes to snatch away the seed? What's that? Birds.

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Birds come to snatch away the seed. And now listen, when Jesus describes, when he explains the parable, what are the birds in the parable, he says that the bird is the evil one, the devil.

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So I think if we use Jesus' own words here in the parable to say, can you please unpack that for me?

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You've got a seed that becomes a tree, and birds come and nest in its branches. Again, the element of prosperous kingdom is there, but I think

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Jesus is telling us there, if we use his word as the key, that as the kingdom grows in the world and becomes prosperous and fills the world and becomes giant out of a small seed, that evil is going to begin to come and try to nest in the branches.

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And this will be the final word I say on this, because we got baptisms, but I want you to hear this.

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Christians will say, they will say, often today, look at the world, look at Houston.

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Houston is destroyed by this massive event, homes flooded.

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Pastor Jeff, look at Obergefell, Supreme Court, which used to point to the law of God, used to point to the law of God, the actual law of God.

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John Jay points to the word of God as the first Supreme Court justice as he's making law.

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Now we've got a Supreme Court that says, kill the children if you don't want them, and you know what?

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Circles or squares. Circles or squares. Marriage isn't a man and a woman, marriage man, man, woman, woman,

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Supreme Court says it. And Christians say this, no, Jeff, the world is not getting better.

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No, you can't say that to me, you can't say with all the sin and the evil and all these evil people around here, you can't say that the world is getting better.

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Jeff, you have to understand that there are evil birds that have started to nest in the branches.

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Why is it surprising to us that as the kingdom of God has grown in the world, that all of a sudden now we have evil ones coming to rest and nest in the branches?

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That's what Jesus told us, that's the pattern of the kingdom, it's insignificant things growing into large trees, and as they begin to permeate out, as the branches extend out, evil ones come to make their nest in the branches.

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Why are we surprised by it? When someone says, look at all the evil, look at all the progress of the gospel, the gospel grew, it filled the world, the branches were extending here, and there was so much fruit of the gospel, and now look, we've got these birds nesting in the branches.

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I guess that means we failed. I guess that means God has failed somehow. I guess that means the church is being destroyed.

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My answer is, why are you concerned about the birds that Jesus said were coming to nest in the branches?

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That's the pattern of the kingdom. It grows, birds come nest in the branches. But there's another part to this parable.

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It's this part, where Jesus says, well, it's like a seed that becomes a tree, and the birds come nest in the branches, and then it's like leaven hidden in lumps of dough.

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It begins to fill and permeate the entirety of the loaf. You see, Jesus describes the kingdom in a way that I think, again, most people wish he didn't say.

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It sounds too victorious. It sounds too amazing. It sounds like it gets too far.

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It sounds too much like the gospel wins in history. It sounds too much like 1

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Corinthians 15, that he must reign until all of his enemies are made a footstool for his feet.

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It sounds too much like Jesus is going to be all in all, and put all things in subjection to himself, like 1

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Corinthians 15 says. You see, the pattern of God is he makes the insignificant significant.

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He makes the weak strong. He makes the incapable capable.

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He makes the meek mighty, and he makes the dead come to life.

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The history of God's kingdom in the world is the history of mustard seeds that become trees.

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This church, this body today before us, is an indication of God's pattern in the world.

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It truly is. The history of our church, this body right now, is the history that is mustard seed to tree.

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It started insignificant. It looked like there would be no way it would be successful.

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It started in a way that didn't catch your eye. Who pays any attention to a guy going into a rehab, preaching in a room with no air conditioning, much like ours today?

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Who pays any attention to that? Who pays any attention to a bunch of drug addicts, many of them still on detoxification medicine?

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Who pays any attention to an insignificant little movement in a drug and alcohol rehab facility?

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You see, I think, watch, if the devil knew what God was going to do with this little mustard seed, he would have worked a little harder to stamp it out.

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Because this little mustard seed that got planted seven years ago has become in itself a large tree with branches extending around the entire world, filling the world up with 11 of the gospel.

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And it went unnoticed. It went unnoticed. It didn't seem worthy.

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We had no budget. We had no money. We had no building. We had nothing.

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We had no understanding of how we were going to eat tomorrow. We had no understanding of what was actually going to happen.

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We had no ultimate view of the future. We had hopes. We had plans. We had dreams. We had goals.

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But we didn't know how God was going to accomplish it. All we had were mustard seeds.

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And that's it. And God used a little bit of leaven, leaven of the gospel, to start to fill and permeate the loaf of this world.

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And God has done huge things to the labor of this body that all started with a little mustard seed that became a tree.

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Here is my call as a pastor. Here's my call. If we can see that this is

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God's pattern in the world, that He works with mustard seeds that become trees, then

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I have to ask you, how does that impact your view of your calling now in the world, how

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God has used you, is using you, will use you? I see the faces of people in this room right now that I know are involved in things that are too big for them.

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They're way too big for you. In yourself, humanly speaking, you can't accomplish it.

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And you might be thinking to yourself, well, I really don't understand how God is going to accomplish this in my life and in my family with my gifts because it just seems so small.

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I seem so powerless. My encouragement to you is this, that's how

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God changes the world. That's how God fills the world. And so your call is to come follow

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Jesus, join Him on His death march to Jerusalem, and you come join

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Him in His death because that's how God does it. He says, join me like a seed, and you come and you die, and then you come to life.

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I will bring it to life. I will accomplish it. And so what are you called to do?

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You have to answer that question because, listen, these sermons can't just be an opening of the text and saying, that's what seed means, that's what mustard seeds do, this is what a bird is in the story, it has to now come to you.

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How will you be changed by this? Will you be disgruntled and upset with God because He made you a little seed, because you didn't just pop out into the world as this magnificent mustard tree?

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I don't even know, are they ever magnificent? I don't know. Right? Or are you going to be satisfied with God's pattern of changing the world with His kingdom that it starts with little insignificant seeds that have to go first into the ground to die and then come to life, and then

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He brings it to its ultimate fulfillment and purpose? What's God calling you to?

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Moms? Moms? Will you see that these little moments in your life that look like death are the moments that God actually turns into life?

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Will you see that your insignificant little realm is something that God uses to change the world?

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You are aware, of course, moms, that it was some mom somewhere that gave birth to Jesus and He's changed the world.

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You are aware, of course, moms, that it was some mom somewhere that gave birth to and raised a man named

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John the Baptist. You are aware, of course, that it was some mom somewhere that nobody even knows her name that raised a man like George Whitefield.

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You are aware, of course, that it is moms that God uses to shoot arrows that are heroes into the world.

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And they don't look like much now, do they? Some of you are like, amen. But God turns these little seeds into massive trees.

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Fathers, same situation. You might see your labor and what your effort is in the world and your calling.

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You might see it as insignificant. Oh, I just lead a Bible study on Wednesday. It's just a little mustard seed.

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Yeah, and it's those little mustard seeds that change the world, right? Oh, I'm just leading a

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Bible study at Starbucks on Thursdays. It's not really significant and powerful and not really ultimately meaningful.

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Well, yeah, it's exactly the kind of thing that God uses to change the entire world. I'm just planning a church and a drug rehab, insignificant, not a big deal.

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How does it change your view and perspective of the world? Were you ready to give up? Were you ready to quit?

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Did God call you to something? Listen, did God call you to something as a believer? He put it in your heart.

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He gave you desire to do it. He's calling you to it or He called you to it. And you have given up because you think that you don't have what it takes.

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You think that you could never accomplish it. You don't think that you're worthy. You don't think you have enough knowledge or wisdom or strength or power and so you didn't go for it and you won't obey and pursue it because you feel like it's too much of a mustard seed.

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It's too insignificant. God can't do anything with mustard seeds. What's God calling you to?

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What's your calling? And this is the call. Come die.

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You must die. You got to go into the ground. You got to cover yourself up with dirt.

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You got to get real humble and lowly and you got to die so that you come to life.

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And then you have branches that reach out and change everything. So what is

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God calling you to this day? Is it to obey and go?

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Is it to stop complaining? Is it to repent of complacency and griping and moaning and discontentment?

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What is God calling you to? How does this parable now impact your heart and your mind for the kingdom of God?