The Kingdom of God is the work of God, and far greater than you imagine.
And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. 27 He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. 28 The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
30 And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? 31 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. 34 He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.
Those of you who are experts in mystery novels probably know the name of Hercule Poirot, the brilliant little Belgian detective at the center of many of Agatha Christie novels. I enjoy the TV adaptation with David Suchet, especially one episode involving a garden, a murdered dowager, a Russian fugitive, and an empty packet of seeds. I won’t spoil the surprise, but at one point, certain details of the case prompt Poirot to recite an old English nursery rhyme:
“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.”
It’s a bit of a mystery to me how a garden can grow with bells, shells, and pretty maids—but of course, that’s the point. It’s meant to be a puzzling rhyme, much as Poirot is meant to be a puzzling mystery story.
And a puzzling mystery is exactly what we are presented with here in the two parables we’ve just read. But we may feel ill-equipped. We're not the famed Belgian detective. And yet we come to a passage like this and we say, God's kingdom is like a, like a seed, like a seed that grows. And we're told very helpfully by Mark that Jesus explained everything to his own disciples, but we're not told that explanation.
At least when we had the parable of the sower, the soils, the sower and the hearts, we remember that parable from a couple of weeks ago. At least there, Jesus actually was recorded when he gave the explanation of what that parable signified. But here we may begin scratching our heads like Poirot and wondering how does this garden grow? How does this kingdom grow? What is Jesus really saying in this parable?
You see, parables have a dual function. On the one hand, this entire sequence of parables that we’ve been following from the beginning of ch. 4 is designed by Jesus to puzzle people, even leave them in the dark, as a judgement for their unbelief. “For them,” Jesus said, “everything is in parables, so that ‘Seeing, they may not see, and hearing, they may not understand.’”
He's giving them over, in other words, to their own ignorance by telling them parables. But on the other hand, the second and the gracious, glorious function of these parables is that Jesus is actually using his parables to teach us things about the kingdom of God, and about the salvation of God, and indeed about himself who is the king of this kingdom. Everything is in parables to those who are perishing, but to those who have life in Christ, he explains that.
And in fact, he uses parables to strengthen our faith, to give us courage, to give us hope in the gospel and in the work that God is doing. And the work that God is doing really is the focus of this parable, of these two parables that really hang together. The parable of the growing seed, the parable of the mustard seed, you could describe these two parables as the parables of the kingdom, both how the kingdom grows and how the kingdom goes.
How the kingdom grows and how the kingdom goes. That's what these two parables, these parables of the kingdom, are teaching us this morning. And the real thrust of it all, as Jesus is telling this to those outside and inside, to those who are perishing and those who have life and trusting in Christ, as he's telling these parables, the main point is this, the kingdom of God is entirely the work of God and far greater than you or I could ever imagine.
The kingdom of God is the work of God and far greater than you and I could ever imagine. That's really the thrust of these two parables as Jesus presents them.
We're going to consider that as we consider again, with two parables, two points this morning, looking first at this parable of the growing seed and looking more closely at how this kingdom actually grows.
Now this scene, this parable of the man scattering seed on the ground, is a cyclical story. The man goes out, presumably he's a farmer, he scatters seed there on the ground and then immediately he sleeps and he gets up and he sleeps and he gets up and he sleeps and he gets up. And the emphasis here is on the seed, how it grows up of itself.
The Greek word there is automate, from which we get “automatic.” The seed automatically grows up.
Now we know that that's not exactly how things grow up. Maybe that's how it looked to the farmer in his day, back in Jesus' time. They were all ignorant back then, right? They didn't really understand the processes. Actually, no, they were very smart.
They were intelligent. They knew how farming worked. They knew that you need to water.
They knew you need to fertilize. They knew you need to till and all of these things. And when we just got done with the parable of the soils and we know that seed on a hard-packed ground is not going to grow seed on a good soil.
But Jesus' point here is that we have, at the very end of all things, when we consider a seed growing, we have no ultimate explanation. This is true today. Now we can read a lot about agronomy, which I found out this week is all the sciences that have to do with farming, agronomy, right? So horticulture and botany and all those other sciences that go together, we know a lot, far more than they knew in the first century.
And yet if you're, you know, it is Mother's Day, right? So if you're a child, right? And you ask your mom, why? She might give an answer. And you ask her a reason for that answer. She'll give you an answer.
You say, why, why, why, how, how, how, but at the end of all things, you just get to, it just is that way. One of the remarkable things about science is that we can know so much about the universe that God has placed us in. But one thing science can never teach us is that why question.
Why is it all this way in the first place? And ultimately we're left scratching our heads as the man who was scattering seed on the ground. How does a seed, why does the seed do this? We know the processes, we know the endosperm and the casing and all of those things, the testa and all of that, but why? It just, it does. It just does.
That's what it does. Science is the study of observable facts. We observe it, we see it, it's what happens.
And so here Jesus is telling us this kingdom is like that seed. You can see a fact, you can, you can, you can do a scientific analysis on, you know, ways that, that churches grow and flourish and reasons why churches have to close. And, and there is a place for that kind of analysis, but at the end of all things, really, as the kingdom is growing, you're left scratching your head and saying, huh, well, it just, it just happened that way.
Why does one church succeed in one city and one fail in another when they were by all outward accounts identical? Why does the kingdom grow in some countries and shrink in other countries? Well, there are factors that we can look to, but at the end of the day, Jesus is telling us that this is something that is happening apart from the work of the farmer.
Jesus gives this picture of the growth of the seed. He says it grows of itself first, the blade, then the year, then the full grain in the ear.
And again, you know, unless some of you grew up in a farming setting, it might be hard to picture this, but you just imagine we've all planted things from, from time to time. I was reminded that this week, one of my children ran up to me with a little pot that had little saplings, little seedlings popping up now. And it's like, look, they're growing, they're growing.
We all did that with those little egg cartons, right? We seen these things happen before how they grow. And it starts rather small. Kids, you can try this.
We actually, we watched at one of our movie nights, we watched an anime, My Neighbor Totoro. And in that there's a scene where the magical fairy actually has an umbrella and he's able to cause great trees to sprout instantly. But kids, you know, it doesn't work that way.
There's another story in Frog and Toad, where Toad doesn't really understand how the kingdom grows either. He plants seeds in the ground and he's singing to them. He's yelling at them.
He's saying, seeds, why don't you just grow up? But they, they don't grow up. And when they do grow up, it's small. It's a small beginning, rather small.
It's not a coincidence that when Jesus was looking for a, a parable, a metaphor for the kingdom of God, he didn't give us a factory assembly line. He didn't give us a production line. They had workshops in those days.
They had craftsmen in those days. There are times where the kingdom is described as a building that is being built, but here Jesus emphasizes the agricultural nature of this kingdom to remind us this is a slow growing kingdom with small beginnings, little saplings, little seeds that grow into little tiny saplings. And it seems rather small at the beginning.
This was a challenge facing the Old Testament church as they came back from exile. So if you know a little bit of Old Testament history, you know, Israel comes into the promised land and then they're kicked out of the promised land because of their sin. And God promised them that's what's going to happen.
But then he brings them back. And as they come back and they build the temple, they're looking around and saying, well, things aren't as grand as they used to. And it's there in Zechariah's prophecy, we're told that we ought not to despise the day of small things.
The little seed planted in the ground growing up. Because Jesus says, okay, first the blade, the little wisp, the little blade of grass, you might imagine. But then as it grows, we see the ear developing.
We see God's kingdom expanding. We see God at work. And then finally, fruit, grain, the end result of all of it comes to fruition.
In contrast to these perspectives, Jesus conveys the fact that the messianic And it's at that point that Jesus says, when the harvest is ripe, he puts in the sickle. Now, when we talk about fruitfulness as Christians and in the kingdom of God, sometimes we refer to fruit as things that are happening right now. We're bearing fruit right now.
John the Baptist tells his hearers, bear fruit right now in keeping with repentance. And yet, there's a sense in which you have to get to the end of the story too. And that's what Jesus has in view here.
It's not a harvest of, let's say, a great evangelistic revival here and now. It's the harvest at the end of all things. This is an Old Testament illusion, actually.
There's echoes back to Joel, the prophecy of Joel, of the reaper coming in with his sickle and putting in for the harvest, gathering in the weeds. So what Jesus is saying here is that as the kingdom goes, as it grows, it's heading towards something. There's an end result, a fruit bearing result, one that you may never realize or see.
But at the end of all things, it will be made manifest. And so the encouragement here that we're meant to take away from this, as we think about this harvest time at the end of all things, is that we should keep sowing. The farmer sows the seed.
He doesn't know how it's going to grow. The kingdom of God is a sort of place, it's the sort of organization and institution by God himself, designed by God, kept by God, preserved by God. And all God calls us to do is to scatter seed.
We just scatter it here and scatter it there. And the seed we know, picking up, I think, from the previous parable at the beginning of chapter 4, is that word that is sown. The word of God scattering seed.
But don't we need some kind of fancy, flashy program? Don't we need some kind of a pyrotechnic show? Don't we need to do some really great, impressive things? Things that are going to get people's attention? Well, there may be a place for attempting great things and things that are visible to all people, but God says the normal work of the kingdom is just sowing seed. Seed that doesn't immediately sprout up. Seed that might take a little while to germinate.
But seed that will grow and bear fruit. It will bear fruit. The kingdom will come.
And that's one of the things we need to remember when we pray that prayer of thy kingdom come. We're not asking God to do something he wasn't already planning to do. But in a way that is beyond even our own comprehension, God who works all things together for good actually works through your prayer.
And through your devotion. And through your gospel evangelism. He works through humble means, small things.
Little broken phrases. Pathetic little prayers. God works through those things, he says, and brings forth great fruit.
There's this wonderful little passage in 2 Corinthians that speaks to this reality. We read 2 Corinthians a moment ago in chapter 5, but in chapter 1, Paul is reminding the Corinthians—who by all means were outwardly an oppressive church—he says to them,
2 Corinthians 1 | For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope
We were sowing seed and we saw nothing coming up from it. We were weak, we were persecuted, we were afflicted. Paul himself was stoned, he was shipwrecked, he was beaten on many occasions.
We're thinking, well, what's going on? I don't understand how this kingdom is going to grow. And yet, there it is. Here it is.
Automatae, automatically, of itself, the kingdom comes by the grace of God. Paul says, we were utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we received a death sentence, he says.
But the reason why God did that, he says, the reason why God works in this way, the reason why God grows the kingdom from the blade to the ear, then the full corn in the ear, the reason God does that, he says, is to make us not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. It's not an accident that Jesus uses an agricultural metaphor. It doesn't just teach us the slowness by which the kingdom comes, but also the reason why we know there will be a harvest, because he was sown in the ground.
There in the ground, his body lay. And yet, we believe in a God here in this church. And this may seem strange to you, and perhaps this is ludicrous to you, or at one time seemed ludicrous to you, but we believe in a God who really does raise the dead.
And if God can raise the dead and call into everything, into the universe, he can call the universe out of nothing and bring it into existence by his word, the simple word, let there be light. And there was light. The simple word, rise, and they rise.
It's by that simple word, that little word, that God's kingdom grows. He delivered us, Paul says, from such deadly peril, and he will deliver us on him. We have set our hope.
Not on our efforts, not on our wisdom, not on the ways that we can yell at the seed and say, grow up, just grow up. No, we trust in the Lord God. We trust in his work.
He will do things at his time and his way. The kingdom grows this way by God's grace.
And yet, Jesus gives a second parable to augment, to bolster this image of the kingdom growing.
And he gives us a picture of a mustard seed. Now, you might not believe this, but there are people out there who will try to get you to doubt the Bible because a mustard seed isn't technically the smallest seed in existence. Jesus is using the mustard seed as an example of the smallest of all seeds, because that's what they would have known.
The mustard seed proverbially is the tiniest of all seeds. Yes, there is an orchid seed out there somewhere that they found that's actually half a millimeter in diameter. I mean, okay.
But the mustard seed is really small too. The mustard seed is incredibly small. In fact, it's only just a couple millimeters.
And really, the remarkable thing about it is, Jesus says, this little tiny mustard seed, when sown into the ground, actually grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants. Now, I was driving yesterday back from Livermore, and I was struck by this. I was looking out in the field and I saw all of these great big mustard plants.
And they grow to a decent size. Sometimes they can grow up to nine feet tall. And there's a whole field of them.
And it's filled from these tiny little mustard seeds, a whole field filled from the day of small things. Again, the smallest of seeds. Jesus said to the apostles once when they asked him, Jesus, what can you do to increase our faith? We're flagging here on our faith.
We're doubting. We're not strong in our faith. Jesus, what can you do? He says in Luke chapter 17, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
And that's not, as some take it, a direction of prosperity Gospel— that we can just believe things will happen and they will happen that way. Rather, Jesus is affirming here that God works through small things, and pathetic means.
A small faith is still faith. A small prayer, a short prayer. Some of you have trouble. I can't pray like Elder Tony or Elder John or Pastor Ben when they make those big, long prayers. I can't pray that way. A small prayer can accomplish great work in the kingdom of God, because that’s how God demonstrates his power to all. That’s how God works.
The kingdom is like a mustard seed, a little, tiny, weak, almost too little to be regarded, insignificant thing that grows and grows into the greatest of all plants. And again, you may be thinking, well, is Jesus using a little bit of hyperbole here? The greatest of all the garden plants? I mean, there's plenty of trees that are much greater. Mustard can bring about a sizable shrub.
Maybe a big field of mustard is what he has in view. There are some commentators who take that view. They say, well, mustard, you know, a bird could land on it.
Yeah, they probably could. But I don't think that's actually what Jesus is saying here. Now, one of the beautiful things about parables is that parables are like poems.
They stretch your imagination. And so Jesus, I think, is in effect saying here, imagine a tiny mustard seed. Now imagine that mustard seed growing into the greatest of all trees, the greatest tree you'd ever imagine, now double the height.
That's what the kingdom of God is. So it's not so much the mustard plant at the end that we're supposed to imagine, I think, but something more like General Grant, the great sequoia, possibly as old as 2,000 years old. That tree may have been alive when Christ was walking on this earth.
You can go see this great sequoia tree, giant sequoia tree, comes from a tiny little seed, five millimeters, five millimeters in length, that tiny little seed, two little papery wings that help it as the wind blows it around this way and that way. And yet it grows and it grows and it grows, that giant sequoia tree. It would take 20 of us in this room to be able to wrap arm and arm around that tree.
That's how big this tree is. And Jesus is saying that this comes from a tiny, small, seemingly little insignificant thing. We doubt this.
Seriously, we doubt this, that God actually works through his word, that God can work through weak things like a crucified savior 2,000 years ago. He spoke Aramaic, maybe he spoke Greek, but I speak English. What does he have to do with me? How can he have anything to say into my situation, into my suffering, into the world events going on here and now? And yet Jesus says the kingdom grows from a tiny little seed, such that even all the birds may nest in the shade of this tree.
All the birds. Why does Jesus include that detail? It just really puzzles me. Why does he have to go, okay, it would have been fine for him to say, okay, tiny mustard seed, big plant, larger than all the garden plants, and that's it, right? Okay.
So kingdom starts small and then it gets big. Why does he mention the birds? Well, it could be because he wants to emphasize the grandiose nature of the kingdom, that it's so big that all the birds can come in and get there. But I think it goes even deeper than that.
You see, this is again, a reference, I think, to the old Testament. This is a picture that we see in the book of Daniel, but even more pronounced in the book of Ezekiel chapter 17, where God gives a prophecy. He's actually in Ezekiel 17 describing the kingdom of God.
God describes the kingdom of God in Ezekiel 17 in this way. He says, I will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and will set it out. I will break off the topmost of the young twigs of a tender one, and I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mount, that it may bear branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar.
And again, you see the way prophets and parables, they stretch your imagination. This is a big noble cedar tree, but it's bearing fruit. And he says that under this tree, every kind of bird will dwell.
In the shade of its branches, every sort will nest. And all the trees of the field will know that I am the Lord. I bring low the high tree.
I make high the low tree. I dry up the green tree. I make the dry tree flourish.
I am the Lord. I have spoken. I will do it.
Dryness. Jesus says the dry tree will become a green tree, a tree that can give shade to all the birds, to all kinds of birds, to all kinds of souls who come to seek shelter in the shade of this tree. They will find it, he said.
And it doesn't take too much of an imagination to realize that he's talking about the nations here, all the birds of all kinds coming together. And Jesus describes this in Matthew chapter 28. What is the kingdom like? It's a kingdom that goes and baptizes and makes disciples of all nations, that they may dwell safely in the kingdom, that they may nest in its shade, universal in scope.
Catholic is the old word for it. The Catholic church, the universal church, the church that spreads and spreads and goes and grows and goes and grows all by the grace and word of God. Not because you're smart or because I'm able to string together a few sentences on a Sunday morning.
Not because we had a great youth program, though we pray that we would be able to teach and train up our youth well. Not because you had that great one-liner argument to that unbelieving friend or family member. Because God will do it, that's why it happens.
Because God is gracious and merciful, and God is strong and able. The kingdom grows and goes by the grace of God, and it will go much further than you can possibly imagine. A small word.
We have evidence of this in church history. Missionaries going to faraway lands, Jim Eliot being one. Saints of old as well, going to the tribes and the Germanic peoples.
And these missionaries go out and often they get killed. And yet God's word grows and goes, and the kingdom grows and goes. And we're sitting here, you're sitting here, I'm standing here in Pittsburgh, California, where nobody on the face of this region knew anything about this parable when it was first told 2,000 years ago.
And here we are with God's word in our laps, and hopefully in our hearts. God will do his work. It may puzzle us, it may seem like a mystery to us.
We may be like reading an Agatha Christie novel or watching a David Suchet on television. We may be wondering, I just don't know how this is all going to work out. But that shouldn't distress us, that should actually excite us.
I was struck by this the other day talking to my parents. They were watching an old sporting event. They were watching an old football game, which maybe some of you do from time to time if you like sports.
You watch an old sports game that really meant a lot to you, that was really significant to you. You already know how it's going to end. You already know the score, right? You have that score memorized perhaps in your own mind.
Maybe you even have it framed up on a wall somewhere as sports memorabilia, and yet you still watch the game and you're excited. Oh no, the team is down. There's only five minutes left in the game.
How are they going to get back? But you know the end. You're not distressed. You're excited because you know how it's going to end and you just want to find out, I can't wait to see it.
I can't wait to see how this is going to work. And I may never see the fullness of it. I may never see the fullness of how God's kingdom is coming until the very end.
But at the very end, when that sickle is put in, we get to see it. The picture in John's revelation, the revelation of Jesus to John, as John turns and sees a multitude beyond numbering, beyond anything that he could number, this great multitude, all the souls drawing together, seeking shade in the kingdom of God. That's what we have to look forward to.
With many such parables, Jesus taught them. He didn't teach them anything. He didn't speak anything to these people without a parable.
But privately to his disciples, he explained everything. There were people there on that day hearing this parable who would never get it. They would say, I don't understand how a mustard seed could grow into a great tree.
I don't understand how a seed growing up itself is like the kingdom of God. I don't get this. And again, we remember that none of us would get this.
None of us will understand this. How the kingdom grows, how we may even participate and be a part of that kingdom unless God graciously bring us in. He said to the disciples at the beginning of this cycle of parables, to you has been given the mystery.
You have the story. You have the end. You know how God is working.
You know it's through a weak and sacrificed savior buried in the ground, raised up. The first fruits, he is called in Colossians, the first fruits of a great and bountiful harvest to come. You know the end, he says.
And so as we think about this as a church, we need to remember to serve the Lord with all of our heart, with courage, with faith, with hope, knowing he will do his work. And I may never see it. You may never see it in a person's heart, what God is doing in their life, in their soul.
And yet God will do his work and God will build his kingdom. And the gates of hell, Jesus says, will not prevail against it. But we need to be patient for it.
Patience is hard to come by. In my own life, I'm very impatient. I want things now.
I want things fast. But God says, be patient. Be like the farmer.
He sows. He doesn't know what's going on, but he sleeps. And I wonder sometimes, someone said once, I wonder sometimes if God gave us sleep as a reminder to us that when we wake up, he still had it all in his hands.
You can sleep, Christian, knowing God is at work, because he who keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps. As he says in Psalm 121, my eyes look up to the hills, to the great difficulties for the kingdom ahead, and for my own personal life. Where comes my help? My help comes from the Lord, even he who made heaven and earth.
Amen.
