The Parables Of The Mustard Seed And The Leaven Dough Series

Our parables today, we’re looking at two, are both illustrating the same point, and are found in both Matthew and Luke’s gospel recordings of the life of Jesus the messiah. We’re going to look at these parables from Matthew’s gospel, found in Matthew 13 starting in verse 31.

Jesus is teaching the crowds at this point, he was actually standing in a boat so he could speak to the crowd more clearly because it was such a large crowd, most likely in the thousands.

Jesus is telling several parables in Matthew 12 and 13 referencing seeds, and planting and growing crops, and he had just told the parable of the weeds among the wheat, and so nestled among several different parables talking about how the kingdom of God works, we find our two parables today. Let’s take a look.

From Matthew 13:31-33: He told them another parable: “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 seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

What is Jesus talking about? Well, Israel had been hoping and dreaming of the messiah to come, but in their theology, their understanding of scripture, they believed the messiah would come and take military and political control of the nation and the world. That was the dream. They wanted total victory over the nation of Rome which had control of Israel at that point in history.

So when Jesus spoke of the coming of the kingdom of God the crowds assumed that Jesus would lead a rebellion against the roman empire, overthrow them, and begin conquering all the nations of the Earth.

So Jesus is clarifying what the kingdom of God really is. In previous statements and other parables Jesus had said the kingdom of God isn’t something you’ll be able to point to and say there it is, because he said the kingdom of God is within you. And you don’t know where it comes or where it goes, like the wind, you don’t know for certain those who are born again of the Spirit, and who are truly a part of this kingdom of God that has come.

The seed that Jesus planted seemed very small. He had 12 disciples, he had a larger following that were called the 72. He had crowds of hundreds and thousands following Him, but in the grand scheme of Israel and the planet Earth it didn’t seem that large. It was a small seed, and after Jesus was crucified many would depart, the 12 went into hiding, and the early church faced unprecedented persecution and harassment from the Jewish authorities and the roman empire.

Jesus identifies the growth of the kingdom of God as something similar to a mustard seed. The mustard seed is very, very small. Yet it grows very quickly, and can become up to 9 feet tall. So large in fact that birds may come and find shelter under it’s branches.

The mustard tree then provides nutrition to those who feed from it. But the mustard plant is by others viewed as a weed, it grows very very fast, and when it’s seeds drop they germinate and grow immediately. A gardener may have a difficult time getting rid of the mustard plant once it’s growing and releasing it’s seed. So it is as well with the body of Christ, as it spread across the world, many a time, and even to this day countries, peoples and governments try very hard to get rid of it. They try to uproot and destroy the body of Christ, this is common in today’s world in countries like China, Iran, Afghanistan, India, North Korea, Russia, and other nations. The early church was severely persecuted by the roman empire. Yet even when believers were killed for their faith, it would just seem to cause the body of Christ to spread even further.

So two thousand years ago, the body of Christ seemed to be only a tiny, tiny seed, you could say, it began with one man, the God-man, Jesus Christ, who was planted, He was crucified. Jesus himself said in John 12:24, “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”

Jesus our messiah’s death, and his resurrection from the grave, became the seed of the body of believers to this very day. It began with Jesus, one man, one mustard seed, planted, and this one seed became a giant tree over the last two thousand years, to the body of Christ in the world today, about 2.7 billion people on the face of planet Earth claiming Jesus Christ as their savior.