The Little Things in Life

The Little Things in Life

Matthew 13:31-32

 

INTRO:

Good evening.   We continue our look at the parables.   Last Lord’s Day evening we looked at the parable of “The growing seed.”  We saw how the spiritual kingdom of God grows.

We saw that this kingdom growth was orderly, just like our physical growth.

We grow through infancy.

We grow through childhood.

We grow through youth and adulthood.

In other words, it takes time and we need to be patient.

 

We also saw that God Himself is the one who causes the growth.   We plant the seed. We water it when we get the chance, but it is God who causes the seed to grow. We don’t know how God makes the seed grow but we know He does because we are here today as Christians.

 

Tonight we are going to look at another aspect of this kingdom growth but from a different angle. This evening we’re going to look at “The parable of the mustard seed” and we will do so from the garden or the field point of view.

 

Before we get started, I would like to share some things I read recently in Natural Wildlife.   Did you know the Praying Mantis only has one ear?   Praying Mantis have a single ear deep in the centers of their thoraxes, or chest segments. "The ear doesn’t look like any other ear," says the article. "They're the only animals known to have just one ear."   The other thing that is interesting about this ear, is that Mantis detect attacking bats by picking up the mammals' high-frequency or ultrasonic chirps. “When a flying mantis is trying to escape from a hungry bat, one of its primary nighttime enemies, it can suddenly pull up in midair, turn to the side and drop into a power dive similar to that of a military pilot avoiding an adversary”.

 

I guess if we get anything from that, we should spend more time in prayer and less time listening to all sorts of questionable things - yet keep an ear tuned to the wiles of the enemy.

 

Did you know that insects with stingers kill more people than snakes with fangs?

The lesson from that may be we need to control our stinging remarks as well as our biting gossip.  

 

Finally, did you know that if a beaver dam breaks, the beavers from several miles around will help rebuild it?  What an example that is to us when one of our own is in need.

 

The point is that everything God created has a purpose and we can learn many lessons from nature, and that includes the mustard seed.   During Biblical times it was very common practice to talk about the mustard seed as one of the smallest seeds.  Strictly speaking it wasn’t the smallest seed around at that time, but the tiny mustard seed is used to stand for anything minute.  

 

For example, Jesus spoke of faith as a grain of mustard seed.  In Matthew 17:20 He says to His disciples after they asked Him why they couldn’t drive out an evil spirit from a boy, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, `Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”

 

Then in Luke 17:6 we find the apostles asking Jesus to increase their faith and Jesus says, “"If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, `Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.”

 

The Palestinian mustard plant, because of its size wasn’t set out in a garden but was usually found in an open field.   This plant could grow to between 10 and 12 feet in height.  When it comes to shrubs, this was a giant. Its branches were so large they would spread out like a tree.

 

I have read that because of its size, it would very often attract small birds to come and nest.  During the time of Jesus, birds would often be seen in the branches of the mustard plant and they fed on the small black seeds of the mustard pods.

 

31. Here again Jesus reveals a secret about how the kingdom of God grows from an every day event.    Let’s read the parable.   Matthew 13:31-32 – “31. Another parable He put forth to them, saying: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, 32. "which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.''” I want to look at 3 points from this parable. The 1st one is this, just because something is little doesn’t mean it’s not important.
    1. When you look at the small mustard seed and you see how tiny it is, you might be forgiven for thinking it’s not worth much, but when you talk to someone who grows these plants you will find exactly how valuable it really is.
       1. As a spice, mustard is sold in seed or powder form and today you can buy it in paste form.  It can be used in biodiesel fuel and pesticides.   According to one report it can produce 2 tons of oil per acre of seed.
       2. In other words the little mustard seed by itself doesn’t look so important, but man’s experience teaches him not to minimize it.  The little things in life should never be discounted.
    2. Of course, when you look at the world today it is obsessed with bigness.
       1. The Great Wall of China is 1700 miles long.
       2. The Alaskan Pipeline runs for 800 miles.
       3. The Dubai Mall has 1200 shops, 13 million sq. ft. and 22 cinema screens.
       4. The largest cruse ship, the Symphony of the Seas, is 5 times the size of the Titanic and with a crew of 2000 it carries 6000 passengers.
       5. When you think about our farmers they are termed as successful by the size of their operations.  To a world obsessed with magnitude Jesus makes an example of the power of the small in saying; “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed”.
    3. Jesus says in Mark 9:41 – “For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in My name, because you belong to Christ, assuredly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.” A cup of cold water, a visit to the sick, a welcome to a stranger, a lost sheep, these are little things in our estimation, yet Jesus uses them in His teaching.
       1. In Matthew 25:35-36 when Jesus is talking about the great division which will happen on judgment day, he says to those on His right, “35. `for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; 36. `I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.'”
       2. Notice Jesus does not want you to feed the world.   He doesn’t want you solve world poverty.  It’s not big things He wants from us, its little things.
          1. Give a hungry person something to eat.
          2. Give a thirsty person something to drink.

• Give someone who needs clothes, something to wear.

1. Look after and visit the lonely and sick.
2. These are not big tasks. They are little mission fields that we all can do. We can all be involved with them.

3. Think about all the things that happen here in our congregation.  There are many.
   1. For example, someone comes early in every Sunday morning and prepares the Lord’s Supper.
   2. That may not seem like a big task, but just think about it.

• We all enjoy partaking of the Lord’s Supper every week because of someone’s effort in preparing it for us. Someone takes the time to prepare it and we all enjoy the blessing. Just because a task seems small within God’s kingdom doesn’t mean that it isn’t important.

4. Take for example doing a good deed.   Doing a good deed for someone will make a lasting impression.
   1. Doing a good deed for someone can spread the Gospel faster than a 100 good sermons.
   2. That’s because just like a grain of mustard seed, it can increase in size beyond imaginable proportion.
5. That brings me to the 2nd What we may think of as small may have a bigger impact than we realize.
   1. However important little things may be, the parable focuses on the consequences of little beginnings.
      1. The Egyptians were famous and still are famous for their pyramids.   One of the greatest pyramids built is at Giza. It contained an inner chamber where the Pharaohs were buried. His servants were usually buried in there too along with some of his personal artifacts.
      2. The rest of the pyramid complex consisted of a large enclosure, an adjacent mortuary temple, and a walkway leading down to a pavilion. When you look at these magnificent structures, you can’t help but stand in awe.
      3. When you think about it though, these structures started with one brick.
         1. Vincent Van Gogh produced many famous paintings but each one started with a single stroke of the brush.
         2. The German composer Ludwig Van Beethoven started his great symphonies and concertos with a single note.

• In English literature every book ever written, every essay, every poem all comes from the 26 letters of the alphabet.

4. In fact, the world’s biggest things have generally had small beginnings.   Momentous deeds and earth-shaking revolutions can be traced back to a speck, just like the germ of the mustard seed.

10. In Luke 2:10-12 when the angels appeared to the shepherds, the angel said to them, “10. … "Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. 11. "For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12. "And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.''”
    1. When you think about Christianity, the world’s greatest movement had its beginnings in a manger in Bethlehem.
    2. The busy Roman world didn’t take any notice of the day when Jesus was born.  It casually took notice of His life, and even when Jesus died the Roman world didn’t care much about His death. Why?
       1. Because Jesus was born in a manger.
       2. He was a carpenter from Nazareth and when He died, to them, He was gone.

• So much for a great leader!

3. Certainly, in outwardly appearances, Jesus looked less than the least of all great leaders.   His followers were counted by the dozens not by the thousands.
4. Yet, from only a handful of disciples, and in despite of their leader’s death on a cross there sprang into existence the universal church of the Lord Jesus Christ, which you and I are part of today.

1. Let’s look at the story of Jesus.
   1. He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman.
   2. He grew up in another obscure village, where He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty.
   3. Then for three years He was a travelling preacher.
   4. He did not live in a big city.
   5. He never travelled more then two hundred miles from the place He was born.
   6. He never wrote a book or held an office.
   7. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness.
   8. While He was still a young man the tide of popular opinion turned against Him.    His friends deserted Him.
   9. He was turned over to His enemies and went through a mockery of a trial.
   10. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.
   11. While He was dying, His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had, His garment.
   12. When He was dead, He was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave.
   13. That’s Jesus. That’s our Lord and Savior. Twenty-one centuries have come and gone, and today He remains the central figure for much of the human race.
   14. Someone said, all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned, put together have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as this "One Solitary Life."  Folks, we should learn the lesson from the mustard seed.   A thing maybe small, almost without hope but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to have an effect.
2. Why is that?   Jesus is saying that small beginnings can succeed because it is God who is behind it.   God makes the seed grow. Do we think that the first century disciples ever thought that their small faith would have had such an impact in the world today?   Probably not. Their faith began almost unnoticed, just like the tiny mustard seed but look at it now. It has gone all around the world.  Jesus said with faith like that, “You can move mountains; you can tell a tree to go and plant itself in the sea.”
   1. There is a story about a town in England had been bombed one night by the Germans. When workers were clearing away the debris, they found on top of a heap of rubbish a sailor's prayer book, open to Psalm 27 with the thirteenth verse marked: “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed That I would see the goodness of the Lord In the land of the living.” The incident was widely commented upon in Great Britain, for it seemed to many that the verse noted in the open prayer book was the secret of Britain's endurance during the worst days of her trial. The victory was won, not by battleships and tanks and rifles and armed men alone, but by faith in God. Unless the Britons had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, they would have given up in despair.
   2. That’s faith.   That’s leaving things in God’s hands because you know that God is in control.

• That brings me to my 3rd point which is; don’t miss the point of this parable. Let’s read the parable again, Matthew 13:31-32 – “31. Another parable He put forth to them, saying: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, 32. "which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.''” Why do I say don’t miss the point of the parable?
  1. Many people adjust this parable to mean something else. Some people like to believe that the branches, which Jesus talks about here, are symbolic of modern-day denominations.  In other words, just as the birds come and sit in the branches of the tree, so it is said that people can come and enter the different braches or denominations of the church.  I see a few problems with this view.
     1. First, they fail to ask the questions we have been asking with every parable we look at.  Who was Jesus speaking to and what did it mean to them?
     2. To find the answer we need to go back to Matthew 13:10 - “The disciples came to him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?"
     3. Jesus was speaking to His disciples. Was denominationalism around in Jesus’ day?   No!
     4. Second, they neglect the context. Just prior to this, in explaining the parable of the sower, Jesus says the birds there represented the wicked one.
  2. Unfortunately, some people try to understand the parable by back-filling it into how they see Christianity today.
     1. What they need to do is look at Christianity as we find it in the first century.
     2. That’s the way to understand it.  It’s all too easy to make a verse mean something it never did by misunderstanding it to fit a viewpoint.
     3. It’s too easy to speak of branches of the church, but in the days of Christ and His apostles, these different so-called branches or divisions of Kingdom were unknown.  The Bible nowhere teaches that there are many churches. The Bible always talks about the church as singular.   How can you have a divided Kingdom with one king, one ruler?
     4. In Matthew 16:18 when Peter gives his wonderful confession to Jesus, Jesus says, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”  Jesus did not say, “On this rock I will build my churches.”  What was it He said? He said, “I will build my church, singular.”
  3. There are other people who like to say that this parable was a prophecy of Jesus.
     1. In other words, this parable remained unfulfilled until the recent rise of denominationalism.    Rubbish!  This takes their interpretation too far.
     2. The branches of the mustard plant are not in the focus of Jesus’ attention any more than the man who sowed the mustard seed or the nests that were made in the plants branches.
     3. The point of the parable is simply that the tiny mustard seed grows into a plant large enough for the birds to come and nest in it.   The man who sowed the seed, the field, the nests, the birds themselves, are all incidental to the one central truth of the parable.
     4. What is the one central truth of the parable?   The point is the kingdom of God, even with a small beginning, would prosper and prevail over all other kingdoms.  That’s what Jesus is getting at, that’s what He is teaching His disciples.
  4. Let’s look at Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, he says in Daniel 2:31-45, and bear with me because this is a long reading, but it is important to read it to help us understand about “The parable of the mustard seed.” – “31. "You, O king, were watching; and behold, a great image! This great image, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you; and its form was awesome. 32. "This image's head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33. "its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. 34. "You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. 35. "Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. 36. "This is the dream. Now we will tell the interpretation of it before the king. 37. "You, O king, are a king of kings. For the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory; 38. "and wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven, He has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all you are this head of gold. 39. "But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours; then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. 40. "And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron, inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and shatters all things; and like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others. 41. "Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. 42. "And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. 43. "As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay. 44. "And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. 45. "Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure.''”
     1. Let me give you a quick run down of what this dream means.
        1. Verse 32 talks about “The head” as being made of fine gold; this is talking about The Babylonian Empire.
        2. Verse 32 also talks about “The chest and arms” as being made of silver. This is talking about The Medo-Persian Empire, another kingdom that will come after the Babylonians.
        3. Daniel also mentions “The belly and thighs” as being made of bronze. This is talking about Empire of Alexander and in verse 33 the legs of iron and the feet of iron and clay is talking about the Roman Empire.
        4. In verse 34 Daniel talks about “a stone” which he says it is not cut out by human hands.
        5. Look at verse 35 - "Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.”
     2. The stone not cut by human hands struck the image down and became “A great mountain and filled the whole earth.”
        1. In other words, Daniel prophesied that God’s kingdom was destined to conquer all other kingdoms.
        2. All you need to do is read your history books and you will see how accurate this was.   You will read about how one kingdom after another fell.
        3. What can we learn from this parable?   Let’s mention a couple of things to think about as we close.

 

CONCLUSION:

Do we realize that we are a part of a kingdom that will never be destroyed and will last forever?

 

Don’t take my word for it, take God’s word.    Daniel 2:44 “In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.”

 

You and I are in that kingdom today if we are Christians.   That kingdom came about in Acts chapter two. We looked at that last week.

 

Paul says in Philippians 3:17-20 “Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven.”

Particularly notice that word is. It does not say will be, but it says; “is in heaven”, present tense.

In our lives we have thought to ourselves that we would like to become a part of this kingdom, but we haven’t got much to offer. Just remember what we’ve learned today.

Jesus says that it is the little things you have got to offer that can make all the difference.    You might not be able to preach or teach, but you can certainly write a letter of encouragement to other Christians in Jesus name.  You might not be able to lead songs, but you can come to worship and encourage everyone with your friendly smile in Jesus name.

In a world where people say that size matters, Jesus says, “Give me what you can, and I will do wonders with it.”  Look at what He did with a couple of fish and 5 loaves of bread. Look at what He did at the wedding in Canaan with six jugs after they have been filled with water.  Look what He does with tiny seeds. Imagine what He can do with you, if you would only give yourself to Him first.

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We learn from the New Testament how to be saved. We need to hear the word; believe in Jesus; repent of our sins; we must confess our belief that Jesus is the Son of God; and be baptized for the remission of our sins… If we follow these steps, the Lord adds us to His church.

 

Perhaps there is someone in the assembly today with the need to be buried with Christ in baptism. If you have never done these things, we urge you to do so today. If anyone has this need or desires the prayers of faithful Christians on their behalf, we encourage them to come forward while we stand and sing.

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Reference Sermon

Mike Glover