Faith in Action series
Small to Great
Luke 13:18-21
CHCC: May 16, 2010
INTRODUCTION:
Quiz:
1) Which country has the largest population? (China: 1.3 billion)
2) What is the world’s tallest mountain? (Mt. Everest)
3) What type of tree is the tallest? (Redwood)
4) Who is the world’s richest man? (Bill Gates)
So far, so good! Now let’s try the second half of the quiz:
1) Which country has the smallest population? (Vatican City: 920)
2) What is the world’s smallest mountain? (Mt. Greylock, in Massachusetts)
3) What type of tree is the shortest? (Dwarf willow – 2 inches full grown)
4) Who is the world’s poorest man? (Jed Matthews owes $22.4 million and has no assets due to a bad investment in an Internet company.)
(Adapted from “Is Bigger Really Better?” by Larry Sarver on sermoncentral.com)
The point of that quiz is that we tend to notice and remember things that are BIG --- while we tend to think very little of things that are little. In all kinds of ways we seem to believe that “bigger is better” … even when it comes to spiritual things. We think big attendance, big budgets, big buildings, big programs, and big talent is what it takes to do anything significant for God.
And we tend to think the opposite about small things. We sometimes feel like God is not doing much through a small church with a small budget and small programs. We think if it doesn’t look impressive, then God must not be blessing it. And not only do we think that way about churches and ministries, we also tend to think that way about ourselves. We may feel like we’re not good enough, rich enough, talented enough, or important enough for God to use us in any really significant way.
I cut my teeth in youth ministry back in 1970 -72 by serving as a summer intern at First Christian Church in Dodge City, Ks. First Christian was a fairly large congregation … running about 350 on Sunday mornings … at any rate, it was the biggest church I had ever worked in up to that point. My youth group was a large and energetic group of around 30 to 50 students.
It seemed that everything I did during those two summers in Kansas went great! As a result, I got to thinking that I must be a top notch youth minister. After all, everything I tried in Dodge City worked!
My reality check came in the fall of ’71 when the Adrian Christian Church hired me to be their week-end youth minister. The Adrian church was smaller … with about 120 for worship on Sunday mornings … and the youth group was only 1/4 the size of the Dodge City youth group. I quickly discovered that in Adrian, the High School and its activities ruled over everything else. If I planned anything and it conflicted with a school event, my event suffered.
For the 9 months I was at Adrian, most everything I tried in youth ministry either sputtered or failed altogether. I literally descended from the heights to the pits of youth ministry. And my self-image as a youth minister suffered accordingly. All I could see was that I went from spectacular in Dodge City to “underwhelming” in Adrian. What made the difference in how I viewed my ministry? It would seem that SIZE was the difference … or so I thought.
But is bigger always better? According to Jesus, the answer is a resounding NO. Look at the two illustrations Jesus gave in Luke 13 to make this point.
Then Jesus asked, "What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air perched in its branches."
Again he asked, "What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough." Luke 13:18-21
Jesus talked a lot about the Kingdom of God. But the interesting thing is, he never DEFINED what the Kingdom of God was. Instead, he told stories and gave comparisons to help people catch on to this new kind of Kingdom.
In this first example, Jesus says that God’s work is like a mustard seed. A mustard seed is very … very … small. (How small is it?) The black mustard seed was the smallest seed ever sown by farmers in Jesus’ time. But that tiny seed grew to be the largest herb. It typically grew to be 12 feet (2 feet higher than a basketball goal.) It was big and bushy enough for birds to build their nests in it.
In his second illustration, Jesus says God’s Kingdom is like yeast that is mixed into bread dough. As a boy, Jesus surely watched his mother making their daily bread. The yeast she used wasn’t dry yeast from a package. Instead she used a very small lump of uncooked dough saved from previous baking days (sour dough). She would take that lump and knead it into the new flour mixture where it would influence the entire batch.
But what Jesus described was not the daily bread that he saw his mother making at home. Jesus described a HUGE amount of flour. The original Greek says “three satas” of flour. That’s about 50 pounds … enough to feed 100 people! Even though the original ball of yeast was small, it would have an enormous influence.
I found a more recent illustration of the power of yeast … Anyone remember this episode of the old “I Love Lucy” show from the 50’s? Lucy’s mixing some bread dough … but misread the recipe and put in 13 packets of yeast instead of 3 packets.
And here was the result! Yeast makes a great example of what the Kingdom of God is like. God uses small things to accomplish BIG results! When His Spirit mixes with the “bread dough” of our human lives, we can “rise” to any occasion! And the more of Him we have, the bigger the results will be!
We can find this principle all through the Bible:
• When God created a new nation to call His own, he didn’t start with a powerful clan or group. He chose one man and one woman: Abraham and Sarah
• When God was ready to lead his people out of slavery in Egypt, he used a man who was rejected as a leader and spent most of his life leading sheep in the desert.
• When God wanted a King to represent his people, he chose a little shepherd boy named David.
• When God came to earth as a human, He came as a baby, born in a barn to a poor and insignificant family.
• When God chose men to start His Church, not a one of them was wealthy, famous, or from a royal family. Instead he chose common fishermen, laborers, and even a despised tax collector.
This principle is still true today. God uses small things to accomplish His big purposes. We need to remember this when we think about the ministries we do here at CHCC. We get our word for ministry from the Latin root that means “small things” … as in the word “minuscule.” Most ministry involves small things --- little acts, small gestures, and everyday service.
I Corinthians 1:27-29 says, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.”
God uses small things to do BIG stuff!
Very few people end up having “big lives,” with careers and accomplishments that make the headlines. Our lives … and our ministries … seem to deal with such ordinary things that we can easily lose our enthusiasm. Christians often run out of steam because we don’t see the big success that we expected. If we don’t see impressive results from our service, we figure God just isn’t blessing our efforts and we get discouraged. SIZE becomes our focus.
The problem is that when we put all our focus on RESULTS, we take our focus off of God. We easily forget that God can grow a BIG tree out of an insignificant seed. We forget that God can work in invisible ways, the way a little yeast can cause 50 pounds of bread dough to rise.
Let’s take another quick quiz:
1) Can anyone here name the last five Heisman trophy winners?
2) How about naming the first five
3) Do you know the Academy Award winners for best actor and actress in 1985? (that’s the year I moved to San Antonio, by the way)
The point is that most of us can’t remember the big winners of even a few years ago. These were the big shots … the ones that supposedly really made a difference. They were the best of their fields. But how soon the applause dies away.
Now here’s another kind of quiz:
1) Can you remember a teacher who helped you in your early years?
2) What about a friend who helped you through a difficult time?
3) Who was the first person who told you about God’s love?
In your own life, the people who made a BIG difference are not famous, super-talented people. They are probably average, every day people that God put in your life at the right moment … and they had a BIG influence on you.
I can think back to the people who have done little things here at Castle Hills. Many of you won’t recognize their names, but the little things they did had a big impact on our congregation.
• Olivia Sawicki was a lady who used to make the coffee every Sunday morning for the Sunday School crowd to enjoy. When I would arrive early in the morning, she was already here. With a key of her own, she let herself in and had a hot pot of coffee ready for me and soon had about 6 to 8 pots brewed by the time Sunday School started. Today, our wonderful Judy Johnson does that same kind of hospitality ministry every Sunday.
• George Farwell, Carl Stinger, and Bob Leatherwood were faithful to visit people in the hospital every week. They even took me with them and taught me where the hospitals were in the medical center part of town. Many have followed in their steps, and we have elders who do that important work along with the ministers today, but those men were the pioneers in that ministry.
• Sandy Shaw was the first youth group leader I ever met from this church. She and her kids were at the Tanglewood Christian Camp when I was a youth minister coming from Arcadia, TX. While her kids grew up here she stayed active in ministry and still works with kids at San Antonio Christian School today. She also heads up our worship service at Blanco Villa Nursing Home every Sunday.
• For many years, Jim Tudor and Kat Hadovski worked hard to rev up our men to perform the Living Last Supper. I can still remember the year we filled our old sanctuary building to standing room only on the Thursday before Easter.
• Ronnie Morgan resurrected VBS … after we had assumed it was a thing of the past. His hard work has made it a more effective ministry for our children than it has ever been. Year after year he does a difficult job with an enthusiasm that makes me marvel. And the combined little efforts of hundreds of workers make VBS a BIG outreach for our church.
This is what Jesus said the Kingdom of God is made of: small acts that have a BIG effect. In Matthew 25, Jesus gave a story about people who did small acts of kindness for others … giving them food or clothing, or visiting the sick and those in prison.
Here’s what Jesus said about the final judgment day for these people: “The King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’
Matthew 25:39-41
These are the words I want to hear on that day when he enters into the fullness of the Kingdom of God!
CONCLUSION:
I want to close by sharing something Gary Gunn told us about at our last Men’s Prayer Breakfast. Several years back, Steven, a young man with AIDS started attending our church. (This was back in the time when AIDS was scary to most people and we didn’t know a lot about it.) The sickness slowly took its toll on the young man, but every time Steven came to church, the folks here reached out to him with love and acceptance.
Gary said eventually, Steven became too sick to leave home. One day he called Gary to come over, and when Gary came, Steven insisted,” I have to go to church Sunday.” Gary and his dad tried to convince him that he was too sick to get out, but he just kept insisting, “No, I want to go to church.”
Well, sure enough Steven wasn’t able to get here. In fact, that was his last Sunday here on earth. But the point is that he desperately WANTED to come … because this was a place where he felt loved and accepted.
No one at Castle Hills Christian Church did anything really BIG or spectacular for that young man. But every Sunday people greeted him, smiled at him, talked to him and gave him hugs. All those little bitty acts of acceptance and love added up to convince that young man that God loved him.
What if we ALL made a point of doing small acts of service … not just on Sunday … but at every opportunity? What difference could the little congregation of CHCC make in the BIG city of San Antonio? Do you believe that God can use our small acts of ministry to build His Kingdom?
