Introduction
A number of years ago at the prodding of a neighbor, who was also a church elder, my wife and I ventured into the mystical world of gardening. A section of our yard had once been a rose garden that one minister had lovingly cared for and another pulled up, so that it was bare when we arrived. The neighbor elder brought over his gas-powered plow and helped me prepare the soil for planting. With his tips and guidance from a book, we commenced to plant our seeds – seeds for cucumbers, for squash, for zucchini, green beans, lima beans, bell peppers, corn, tomatoes, cantaloupe, and pumpkin squash. We were ambitious for a novice couple.
Gardening, we learned, gives one a different outlook on things. For example, I no longer saw squirrels as cute little critters, but rather invaders raiding my corn. But more than learning the devious ways of squirrels, we experienced the awe of watching a garden come into being out of the barren ground. Gardening truly is mystery. You hide little seeds under the dirt, pour a little water on top, and nothing happens. The ground is as barren as it ever looked. You go out the next day and it looks the same, and again the next day and still the same result, so that your anticipation begins to decline. But then the morning comes when you step outside and the mystery appears – little green sprouts have begun. Your seeds have actually become live plants. And they keep growing day by day until the next wonder takes place. They begin to flower and the first tiny signs of fruit appear.
It is exciting to watch the marvelous fruit develop each day, until the time of harvest comes and you pick your first vegetable…and then another vegetable, and then another, and then another until you wonder how much produce can come from such a small garden. There isn’t a one-day harvest in which you take all that a plant produces. It keeps producing when you think there is nothing left. The zucchini plants were the worse! You pick all the fruit you can find only to come back the next morning and find an enormous zucchini the size of your arm. The pumpkin squash plants were downright eerie. We discovered that they were really vines that developed elephant ear size leaves and which crept throughout the garden bearing fruit that had the texture of a pumpkin and the shape of a large summer squash. And the plants wouldn’t stop producing! We ate, we gave to neighbors, we froze, we threw in the woods, and still new produce would await us the next day. The next year we grew a smaller garden.
That first garden is what the kingdom of God is like, so Jesus tells us. 26 He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”
Some of you gardeners are shaking your heads and thinking, “If it could only be so easy.” I didn’t mention the weeding and the watering when there was no rain, though I did allude to the battle with cute critters. And I never went as far as real gardeners, who make sure the soil has the appropriate nutrients and who defend their plants from micro-insects and other dastardly perils. But even they must nod at the wonder of growth, because they especially know that they do nothing more than help provide a good environment. The growth itself they cannot produce. All they can do is watch.
Let’s look at Jesus’ garden. A man scatters seed. I don’t think that Jesus intended for the man to represent anyone. Just look at the changing roles he plays. He scatters seed – that sounds like Jesus spreading the word, but then he plays no role in the care of his garden. Then again he becomes the reaper, a role for Jesus in his second coming. He seems to be little more than a prop in the story. It is the mysterious growth of the seed that is the central focus of the story. That seed is the same seed in the parable of the sower; it is the word of God; it is the gospel.
The harvest, by the way, is the final judgment day. Joel 3:13 and Revelation 14:14ff both refer to that day as the time to swing the sickle and reap the harvest. Those texts speak of the harvesting of all mankind for judgment. Jesus, however, is referring to the harvest of the people who belong to God’s kingdom. God’s kingdom garden will produce a bountiful harvest.
How that harvest is produced is Jesus’ lesson. The answer is mystery. There is a mysterious power in the word itself that assures growth and a bountiful harvest. Let’s keep that thought and go to the next parable of the mustard seed.
30 Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. 32 Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.”
Here we have another parable to describe some truth about the kingdom of God. The previous parable put forth the power of the word to produce growth in the kingdom. In the parable of the sower, Jesus explained why there are different responses to the word. What is the truth he would have us to know here?
Again we have a seed. There is no reference to soil condition as in the first parable and little attention to the growth process as in the second. Instead, Jesus makes a contrast between the tiny seed and the large plant it becomes. By the way, some gardeners or botanists may object that the mustard seed is not the smallest garden seed. Maybe someone objected when Jesus told the story. I’m sure his response would have been, “I’m just telling a story.” Other rabbis had used the mustard seed before as a metaphor for what is small, and it was and still is common practice for a storyteller to use hyperbole to make his point. What is Jesus’ point? That like the mustard seed, the kingdom of God starts off as an inconsequential movement only to grow into the greatest of all kingdoms.
Let’s put the lessons of all three parables together. From the sower and the soils, we learn not to be dismayed by what appears to be the ineffective power of the word to produce fruit. What may seem to be failure of the word is in reality the unsuitability of the soil. The soil intended for the word will, however, see a harvest beyond what could have been expected. From the parable of the growing seed, we learn that the word produces a harvest out of its own power; the gospel itself will produce the intended fruit. The parable of the mustard seed provides the finishing touch. The fruit will be tremendous. The kingdom will become the greatest of all kingdoms.
That was a good lesson for Jesus’ disciples to learn. Jesus was doing amazing work, to be sure, but he had yet to usher in the kingdom with the power that was expected of him. They and all the followers were still waiting for the kingdom to come. Jesus was teaching them that it had already come in him. His presence and his teaching had ushered in the kingdom, whether anyone was aware of it or not.
Lessons
It was a good lesson for them to remember when the came for Jesus to leave them. The wondrous birth of the church at Pentecost, notwithstanding, they would face many obstacles and threats, and they would be tempted to wonder if their movement would survive. The early church would face uncertainty, its bands of believers scattered throughout, at best, an indifferent Roman empire and oftentimes a hostile one. Most of their adherents were poor or of the lower class. The churches were not wealthy, nor influential. They had the two disadvantages of being small and new. We may claim that our faith is our minority one today, but at least ours is a long-lasting one. They were the upstarts of their time and resented for their very novelty. Furthermore, there would be problems within the church – doctrinal heresies, dissension, and just plain jealousy. What would happen when the apostles and original elders died? Indeed, many were expecting Jesus’ return before that generation died out. What were they to do when he did not return? Would the church survive?
We know the answer. It not only survived; it conquered the Roman Empire. It not only kept a remnant alive; it became the dominant religion of the Western world and permeated all Western world-views up through the 18th century. And though it does not have the same hold on Western thinking that it once did, in reality there is probably a greater percentage of the world’s population that is genuinely Christian now than at any other time in history. More people groups have a church, and more languages possess the scriptures, than any other time. No other religion comes close to the numbers and breadth of adherents as Christianity. The mustard seed has truly become a great tree. But we and this time period are not intended to be the pinnacle of the kingdom’s glory. The time will come when Jesus returns and reaps his full harvest of the elect from all the ages. Then will all creation pay homage to the King of Kings as they behold his majestic kingdom.
The parables of kingdom growth are great encouragements for us at times when we would grow discouraged, as we are wont to do. We still worry about our struggling churches and what seems to be a decreasing influence in the world. The world seems to be growing while we decrease, and it sure seems to be turning up its attacks on the church. We are warned that the next generation will be harder to reach than the previous generations, and that the church risks becoming irrelevant to the mainstream of society. These parables serve as good reminders to us that the church will not only survive but flourish, though in unexpectant ways.
But they should also make us think about the very methods in which we advance the kingdom of God. In the previous sermon, I addressed the matter of preaching from the angle of how you the worshipper ought to receive it. You ought to come with desire to hear the Word of God. You ought to approach the sermon with ears to hear the gospel. But one might easily have raised a question at that point. “It is well and good to tell people how they ought to listen, but what about those who did not listen to how one ought to listen? What then?” Indeed, someone more blunt might have said, “It sounds like you are excusing yourself from the hard task of winning hearers.”
That is a legitimate concern. It is common and easy for boring ministers to excuse poor delivery and the consequential result of poor attendance, by blaming his hearers. “That’s the way people are now-a-days. They just want to have their ears tickled. Well, I’m not going to do it.” What they really mean is that they are not going to do the hard work required of them to be clear and insightful with the Word of God.
And that is the issue – what the preacher is doing with the Word. Is he using the Word to be little more than an introduction to a sermon topic, or is he using the sermon to unfold the Word to his hearers? Think through how I approached the parables this morning. I started with a story about my gardening. Why? I wanted to catch your interest, but that is not the primary reason. I usually do not start with stories or long introductions. I was actually trying to teach a point that’s conveyed by the parable stories – that the growth of God’s kingdom is a wondrous mystery. I wanted to tell you more about the squirrels and my attempts to get rid of them. It would have been funny, and I might have been able to make some lesson out of it, but it would not have aided the lesson of the parables.
It didn’t take long for me to get to the meaning of the parables. The simple reason is that they did not require the same kind of effort we needed to expend to understand the sayings in our previous passage, nor were they as involved as the parable of the sower and the soils. They were short parables with straightforward meanings. It was not necessary for me to take you through a number of other biblical passages or do word studies to help you understand what Jesus was teaching. That leaves me with more time to do what I am doing now – applying the lesson.
Sometimes I have very little application. A few weeks ago for my introduction to the sermon on “The Big Picture in the Bible” about missions, I said there would be no application. I just didn’t have time. Why do I have time one week and not another? Because my primary interest is to unveil the lesson of the scripture. Believe it or not, I am as brief as I know how to be.
Ministers are judged by how interesting they are, and I think that is a fine measuring stick. There is no excuse for a boring preacher when you consider the material he has at his disposal. What greater material can one have than the Word of God? And yet, ministers are often misjudged with that measuring stick. We measure according to the number of interesting and funny stories told, the use of imaginative figures of speech, and how engaging the voice inflections are. We measure according to how memorable a story or saying was. All these things are fine to have on the measuring stick, but the stick itself must be made produced by the standard of the Word. Thus, what should be measured is not merely how interesting a story was, but how helpful it was to understand the scripture being taught. The inflections of the preacher’s voice are not measured merely by how well they catch our attention, but how well they direct our attention to the scripture teaching at hand. You see, the task of the minister is not to supplement the Word so as to make it more effective or entertaining, but to make the Word as clear as possible that it may do its own effective work. I don’t want to coat the Word to make it go down your throat more easily; rather, I want to remove whatever shell might be around it, so that you can receive it in its more pure form.
Let the Word do its work. That’s the minister’s job. His confidence must be in the power of the Word and in the means that Jesus has given for his kingdom to advance and to mature. What are the other means? There are the sacraments – the signs and seals of the church that Jesus himself instituted and that are unique to the church.
The sacraments – baptism and the Lord’s Supper or Communion – are but visual expressions of the gospel – sort of parables of the senses. They can be seen and felt, even tasted in the case of the Lord’s Supper. What do they teach about the kingdom of God? That it is entered through the atoning work of Jesus Christ. That as water cleanses the body, so the blood of Jesus cleanses the soul; that as water anoints the head, so the Spirit anoints the soul with life. They teach that as bread and wine nourish the body, so the death and life of Jesus nourish the soul. But they do more than teach, just as the Word of God does more than give information. The sacraments and the Word impart life. They impart life through the grace of God. They impart life because they are filled with the life-giving gospel of Jesus Christ and are empowered by the Holy Spirit. Power is in these means of grace, just as power exists in the seed and in the kingdom as our parables taught.
The Word of God is not empowered by my talent to make it “come alive.” The sacraments are not empowered by my ability to give the right touch or by the musician’s sensitive playing of background music. The effectiveness of what I do or the musician does is only as good as it draws your attention to the gospel, to God’s Word.
Finally, there is prayer. It is a mystery why and how God operates through the prayers of weak and sinful people as ourselves, and yet he does. Through prayer lives are transformed, the Word penetrates through harden soil, and produces a harvest beyond what could be expected. Don’t try to explain it. Don’t reason it through. Accept the mystery. God has deigned to use our weak prayers to produce great fruit for the kingdom.
Indeed, accept the fact that the kingdom of God is mystery. Whether we are asleep or awake, whether its seed seems small or large, it will generate life that is abundant and rich.
