Introduction
Read Matthew 13.31-33. Pray.
Revelation 20.1-6: Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while. Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.
The phrase, “thousand years” appears in nine places in the Bible, six in the passage I just read. It also occurs in 2Peter 3.8, which quotes Psalm 90.4. In both of those places, the authors say that time does not work for God like it does for us: “a thousand years in God’s sight are like one day, and a day like a thousand years.” The only other use is in Ecclesiastes 6.6, where Solomon says that even if you live a thousand years twice over, eventually you will die, as all must.
So Revelation 20 is the place which speaks of the “millennium,” or the thousand years, in relation to the rule and return of Jesus, the binding and release of Satan, and the resurrection of the saints. Bible students argue a great deal about exactly what this thousand years might be like, and when it will occur. In fact, the different interpretations even have names.
Pre-millennialism says that Jesus will return to the earth, physically and bodily, and then reign here for an earthly and future kingdom of a thousand years. His return is pre-millennial, before the thousand years of peace and prosperity as Satan is bound for that time.
Post-millennialism teaches that Jesus’ return is “post” or after the thousand years. The millennium will be created by the spread and triumph of the gospel which powerfully transforms societies and brings peace and justice on earth for a thousand years. Only then will Christ return, after the thousand years of success of the kingdom.
A-millennialism believes that the thousand years of Revelation 20 is not a literal time period, but a symbol of the church age. It is now that God restrains Satan’s power in some way as the gospel advances and converts people to Christ. There will be no future millennium of earthly perfection; instead, we are now in the time of Christ’s reign on earth through the church.
Then if you have been around the church for long, you may have heard the gag that some Christians are pan-millennialists, they believe it will all pan out in the end.
I tell you all that because I am not going to talk about the millennium in the sermon today. So why would I tell you what I am not going to tell you?
Because the two parables we are considering from Matthew 13, for better or worse, are often interpreted in relation to post-millennialism. For example, the prominent Welch minister, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones notes that when pressed for Biblical support for their view, postmillennialists “quote some of the parables in Matthew 13: the parable of the yeast, for instance, which spreads until it makes all the dough rise. Then they point to the parable of the mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds, but it becomes a great tree and the birds of the air nest in its branches, and so on. They say that these parables teach quite clearly that the kingdom, as the result of the preaching of the gospel, will be extensive and world-wide and they point out that so far we have had nothing that corresponds to that” (The Church and the Last Things, 216). Lloyd-Jones was an a-millennialist, but he rightly noted that these two parables are often discussed in relation to end times.
Something else I found interesting in my studies this week was the wild variety of interpretations of these parables. Serious and committed Bible students have proposed completely contradictory meanings for Jesus’ words! For example, during the time of the reformation, the mustard tree was said to be the papacy and the birds those who were misled to join that church. The three measures of flour are the elect, and the yeast the evil of romanish theology. More modern Bible teachers have gone in a similar direction, supposing that yeast must be evil and that the mustard plant represents the church growing wrongly by adding false professors to its membership.
I know this is a terrible introduction, but I was concerned that if I did not mention those things, you might suspect that I was not aware of those interpretations. I am, but I think that they are either wrong or miss the main point.
These two parables form a set. The ESV Bible rightly puts both parables under one heading. They are a set, literally and thematically. Together they tell of the hidden power and unstoppable growth of the kingdom of God.
1Corinthians 4.20: For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power.
I take that to mean that it is possible to adopt Christianity in words while avoiding the true effects of the faith. It is possible to accept the ideals of the Christian message, to agree with its principles and beliefs, even to defend it as true, yet to be a stranger to its transforming power. It is possible to understand intellectually or philosophically the teaching of the Bible and, at the same time, not to experience the Spirit in one’s life. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power.
Christianity does embody a wondrous philosophy for life; it teaches the highest and purest morals; it urges humanity on to great ideals. I could agree with all that and still not personally know the power of God.
The kingdom does not consist in being able to talk about the truth, but when the truth does something inexplicably miraculous in your life. What in your life can you point at and say, “Look at this – it is amazing that this is happening in my life. This cannot be explained by natural causes; this is not the result of self-help, twelve steps, or my decision to straighten out my life. This is God’s seed, a supernatural work of grace planted in me from on high!”
Do you have that? Do you know the work of Christ, or simply the words? Obviously we know the talk; we are here on Sunday morning. But does your life reveal the gospel coming to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction? (Cf. 1Thessalonians 1.4-5). These parables ask those questions of us by teaching us two remarkable traits of the kingdom.
First, these parables teach the hidden power of the Kingdom of God. The kingdom is like a tiny seed planted in a field; the kingdom is like a leaven placed into the center of fifty pounds of flour. From a minutely small and insignificant beginning, the work of God spreads with insistence.
It is like a mustard seed, the smallest of the seeds used in agriculture in Israel at the time. All would seem to be lost when that tiny speck is buried in dark soil. So it is with the kingdom. What could be less significant than preaching Jesus and him crucified? Yet this minute and seemingly dead word, planted in the soul by the Spirit through the hearing, grows to effect the whole person.
Note also, please, that what grows does not come from what was already there, but from something outside, something planted by the power of God, something hidden in your heart by God’s grace.
The Bible uses a variety of images to show that true Christianity is not simply a set of new ideals or new morals or even an acceptance of forgiveness (as wonderful as the promise of forgiveness is). Christianity is life on an entirely new order. 1Peter 1.23: “you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.” 2Peter 1.4: “you may become partakers of the divine nature….” James 1.18: “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth.” John 3.3: “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Matthew 13.33: “the kingdom is like leaven hidden in three measures of flour until it was all leavened.”
These images all have in common the hidden power of God working his marvelous grace. The kingdom of God does not come with flash and fanfare; its power is not that of dynamite or bombs.
Consider how useless a seed is if slammed against a sidewalk. Take your gun, fill the chamber with powder, but instead of steel shot, use acorns. When you fire the gun, a mess of acorn innards will stain the sidewalk, but no damage will be done. Instead, however, take that acorn, plant it in the ground beside the sidewalk, and wait 20 years. The roots from the tree will grow slowly and imperceptibly, yet powerfully and insistently, until they reach under the sidewalk and destroy it. Even concrete must give way to the power of life.
Dr. Knox Chamblin: “Beware lest the present hiddenness of the kingdom blind you to its present reality. The kingdom has been inaugurated; its powers are already mightily at work. Just as power is released in the seed and in the yeast precisely as they are hidden away, so too the powers of the kingdom are being unleashed precisely here and now, in the time of its small beginning” (Commentary on Matthew, RTS: 1989, 100).
The seed is an outside force. You must be born again from the Spirit, spiritually recreated. There is no such thing as a true Christian who is not born again. Being born again is not a type of Christianity, but a way of saying that the Spirit has entered your life, by God’s will you now share in the divine nature. Is there some grain of work in your life, begun and sustained by God, that can only be explained by his power? Have you been born again by imperishable seed of the word of God? The kingdom of God is a hidden power.
Second, these parables teach the growing power of the Kingdom of God. Both the seed and leaven grow. Inevitable, secret, growth characterizes the kingdom of God. They appear small and unimportant at first, but they grow to make all the difference.
I mentioned to the kids earlier in the children’s sermonette that wine takes on the flavor of the soil in was grown in. Leaven works in a similar way: it does not replace the dough, but transforms it in its likeness.
So too the work of the kingdom does not replace your personality and who you are. Jesus does not make us into robots. God’s grace does not change us into something wholly different. Instead, God’s work affects and improves all that we are. Not that all our problems are cracked and fallen away. Not dynamite destroying your sidewalk of sin, but something from God growing under your problems, lifting them up to push them out of your life.
Maybe example would help. Let’s think about how a true Christian might grow in thinking, acting, feelings.
Is your thinking growing? Not simply that you know that God is holy, but the holiness of God is more and more real to you. Does God’s holiness affect how you think about yourself and others? Does this truth disturb you, change you?
Not only that you know the Bible is true, but that its teaching grips your heart and gives you a new way to see everything else in life. Do you see your problems in light of what the Bible says, or only in light of how they bother you? Are you growing in your thinking? Are you transformed by the renewing of your mind?
Being part of the kingdom also means growth in actions. When we are first born, we do things by mere instinct. A baby puts everything in his mouth, good and bad, to feel and sense it. But as we age, we learn to control what we put in our mouth. We progress from instinct to self-control. Are you growing in actions that show self-mastery? Are you becoming more human, not simply instinctual or animal like? Are your behaviors indicative of one who has a different power directing and developing what you say and do and how you act in high-pressure circumstances? Do your actions show that God is working in you powerfully and significantly?
Those who are in the kingdom also grow in their feelings. The more God works in your life and changes your thinking and actions, the more sensitive your heart grows to the things that move God’s heart. Are you weeping over your sin and rejoicing over his love? When the Father spoke to Jesus while he was here, he said, This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. Is your heart thrilled to know that the Father loves you just as he loves Jesus?
Or think of a negative emotion, like bitterness. We grow bitter because the mercy of God is not as real to us as the things people have done to hurt us. I forgive when God’s mercy is more significant to me than my hurts. This is growth in humanity, not simply stimulus-response, but in an emotional response defined by the reality of the kingdom.
Let me tell you something wonderful.
It does not matter what condition you entered here this morning, you can leave a different person. Not because this sermon is so life-changing or because you can decide to be different. But because God plants something new in us.
We can all be impatient – we want things done now. So I need to remind you in whom the work seems slow, do not be discouraged – the kingdom is hidden and gradual.
But maybe for some here, you must admit that you are not seeing any supernatural growth. Is your experience in word and not power? If so, how do we change?
We change by receiving the power of the kingdom, the seed and leaven. How do you receive the power of God?
Look to Jesus.
Jesus Christ is greatest example of power. He was the son of God. If he wanted, he could have commanded twelve legions of angels to do his bidding. Yet he did not use his power.
There is no greater power than to abstain from power in order to serve. If you have power to crush someone, yet put your power underneath them to serve and lift them, that is greatest power.
That is Christ on the cross. With the power of God in his hand, he uttered not a word so as to bear your powerlessness. He bought you strength by becoming weak for you. You can only get his strength by acknowledging your weakness.
Will you? Even if you do not know what means. Ask for help. Ask for the power to be given to you. Mustard seed looks pathetic; leaven looks so insignificant as placed into bushel of flour. But they grow and change everything else. This is what the kingdom is like. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
