Little Seed - Big Tree Series

ILLUS: I was just talking with a couple this past week, and the husband was telling me about the terrible life he had had. He spoke of the nightmares that he’d had in the past. The nightmares came because of He described his harsh child hood and because of his experiences in the military.

He called us to find out about church because, when he had lived in Colorado, he had attended a congregation there. He liked their fellowship and their friendliness. And he noticed that – as he went to church - his nightmares began to go away.

Why?

Because while he was in church, he was listening to God’s Word.

He was surrounded by God’s people.

He was probably even the subject of some their prayers while he was there.

He was finding shelter in the branches of God’s tree.

He was being exposed to the hope and protection that God wanted to offer him.

And that’s the value of God’s church to people who are often on the outside looking in.

Now, I want to focus on another aspect of this parable.

Jesus said “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and BECOMES A TREE, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.”

Matthew13:31-32

Now, when I study to prepare for Sunday sermons, a lot of times I’ll look for oddities in text. Something that makes me say “I wonder why God said it this way?” or “I wonder why this or that happened in people’s lives?”

As I prepared for today’s sermon, I found an oddity in this text that has disturbed Christian scholars for years: Mustard seeds don’t ever seem to produce trees.

Now, it’s always possible that there was a tree in that day that was called a mustard tree that modern day scholars don’t know about, but for all intents and purposes, most commentators are disturbed by this discrepancy.

Personally, I don’t know why they’d be disturbed.

Jesus is telling a PARABLE.

His objective is to make a point… not necessarily to be botanically correct.

If there actually wasn’t anything like a mustard tree… his audience would have known that.

Jesus would have known that.

It would be common knowledge that mustard seeds didn’t produce trees.

BUT this mustard seed (the one in His parable) produces a tree.

Why?

One man’s sermon I read stated that Jesus’ point in this parable was:

“God causes the smallest, most insignificant seed to grow into something that is the biggest and greatest tree. There is no limit with God. This plant doesn’t stay a plant - it becomes a tree.”

(Tim Barrett, Sermoncentral.com, from his sermon “Mustard Seed”)

Normally, mustard seeds grow into shrubs BUT this one grows into a large tree.

That’s not normal… but then, what God intended to do with the Church wasn’t normal either.

On the day of Pentecost, 12 men stood in a plaza in Jerusalem and the Spirit of God descended on them in the shape of tongues of fire. And they spoke in languages they had never learned so that the Jews in the crowd from other nations all could understand