To what shall we liken the kingdom
of God? Or with what parable shall we
picture it? It is like a mustard seed, which,
when sown on the ground, is smaller than all the seeds on earth.
But when it is sown, it grows up and becomes greater than all
herbs, and shoots out large branches, so that the birds of the air
may nest under its shade. And with many such parables He
spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. But without
a parable, He did not speak to them, and when they were alone,
He explained all things to His disciples." And so we've seen
in the past weeks that even though the parables represent very,
very simple things, It's only to those in the kingdom, to those
who are taught by God, verse 11 says, to you it has been given
to know the mystery of the kingdom of God. But to those who are
outside, all things come in parables. So the Lord Jesus' teaching is
very simple teaching. He doesn't have to explain complicated
words and He uses the simplest of expressions and He uses the
simplest of pictures that are common to the people around them.
But in this parable I'd just like us to look at three aspects
of this kingdom of God. I'd like us to look at the Lord
Jesus as the seed, the Lord Jesus as the faithful one and Our prayer always is that the
Lord would take the tiny, insignificant activities which seem, from our
point of view, to be as insignificant as the mustard seed, which looks
nothing more than a grain of sand. But in fact, in the hands
of Almighty God, who has given that faith, That faith is a wonderful
and a powerful and an eternal and incredibly significant thing.
And Paul lived his life as a Christian by saying in Galatians
2.20, I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I
who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now
live in the flesh, I live by the faithfulness of the Son of
God who loved me and gave himself for me." And so the aim of the
parable, the aim of our gathering together is that we would gaze
upon the Lord Jesus and that we would live by His faithfulness. So the Lord Jesus is the seed.
In Genesis 3.15 there's a proclamation of the gospel. The seed of the
woman would come and it would crush the serpent, even though
the serpent would do damage to the seed of the woman. Galatians
talks about the Lord Jesus being the seed of Abraham. And in this text he talks about
this seed being sown. The Lord Jesus describes himself
as a grain, a seed in John 12, 24. He said, Truly, truly, I
say to you, unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and
dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it brings forth
much fruit. And so this seed seems to be
the least of all seeds. And that is because God is bigger
than us. God's thoughts are not our thoughts,
and His ways are not our ways. He says in Galatians 6, You who
think you are something when you are nothing. The Lord Jesus
came into this world in the most insignificant of ways. He was
born, this king of the universe, this creator of the universe
came through the womb of a young virgin girl. In fact, his birth
was going to be surrounded with controversy because she'd become
pregnant before she was married. And she was born to parents in
a despised part of Palestine, in a little part of the Roman
Empire on the outskirts of it. A despised place. Can anything good come from that
area? And these parents traced their
lineage back to David, the great king. But now these descendants
lived in this small part of this small province of Palestine on
the outskirts of the Roman Empire. Poor, poor people, a carpenter. And so the Lord Jesus is described
as a root out of Jesse in Isaiah chapter 10. So he comes in humility
and he comes to a humble family and he comes in very humble ways. Isaiah gives us the best description,
probably the only description we have of what the Lord Jesus
looked like. Just read some of the things
that are so familiar to us in Isaiah 52 and 53. "'Just as many were astonished
at you, my people, "'so his appearance was marred more than any man.'"
Isaiah 52, 14. 53, two of these famous verses. "'For he grew up before him like
a tender shoot, "'like a root out of parched ground. "'He had
no stately form or majesty "'that we should look upon him, "'nor
appearance that we should be attracted to him. He was despised
and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,
like one from whom men hide their face. He was despised and we
esteemed him not. Further on, it talks about him
being oppressed and afflicted. He was led like a lamb to the
slaughter, like a sheep that is silent before its hearers.
He did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment, he
was taken away. He was crushed by God. 53.11 talks about the anguish
of his soul. So there was nothing about the
way the Lord Jesus came into this world to make men desire
Him. Not the place of His birth, not
His family, not His education, not any of the attainments He
had in society. He had no form or comeliness
that we shall see Him. He had no beauty. We truly esteemed
Him as the least of all seeds. And I don't know about you, but
I look back on my dark days of unbelief, and that's how I considered
the Lord Jesus. I think all people will consider
themselves to be like that at some stage in their lives. We
esteemed Him not. To me, He might have been a good
man, but He was a fraud, and He deceived people. So he was,
in my estimation, and I grieve over it now, he was the least
of all seeds. And so he is in this world of
ours today. But, 32 says, but when it is
grown, when it is grown, it's the greatest among the herbs
and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and lodge
in the branches of it. So the Lord Jesus, who came in
such humility, has actually become the greatest of all, isn't it?
He is the holy one, He is the faithful one, and He is the one
in whom His children lodge, and His children can dwell as the
birds dwell in the trees. He says, I am the vine. He takes
such humble ways of describing Himself. you are the branches
and he that remains in me and I in him, the same brings forth
much fruit, for without me you can do nothing. And so this despised
and seeming to be the least of all has become the greatest.
one of the great passages that the Lord Jesus took His accusers
who were about to kill Him. He reminded them in Mark 14,
62 and quoted when they asked Him who He really is and He quoted
to Him and He says, I am. He took upon Himself what He
truly was and that is the name of God. And you will see a promise
from God, the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and
coming with the clouds of heaven. This is how heaven describes
this One who will come, and come again He must. I was watching
in the night vision, says Daniel, and behold, One like the Son
of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. He came to the Ancient
of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. to him was given
dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples and nations
and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting
dominion that shall not pass away and his kingdom, the one
which shall not be destroyed. And so in Isaiah, we have all
of these descriptions of the weakness and the seeming insignificance
of the Lord Jesus. But there are amazing promises
in that wonderful passage in Isaiah. He will see his offspring
and he will prolong his days and the good pleasure of the
Lord will prosper in his hand. He will see, he will see the
anguish of his souls, he will see it and he will be satisfied. By His knowledge, the Righteous
One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their
iniquities. Therefore I will allot Him a
portion with the great, and He will divide the booty with the
strong, because He poured Himself out to death and was numbered
with the transgressors. Yet He bore the sin of many in
Himself and interceded for the transgressors. And so this lowly
man, this Galilean, a despised Nazarene, is actually God of
this universe, and He is. esteemed in this world as he
was in the eyes of the people who saw him without faith at
that time. They saw his wonderful deeds,
they saw his wonderful miracles, and we've seen on our path through
Mark's Gospel how one group of people rejoiced and were amazed
and delighted in him, and the more he reveals himself, the
more the others despised him. and spoke ill of him." So Christ
is the seed, seated at God's right hand. He is the Lord our
righteousness. He is the kingdom of heaven.
But this plant that's sown into this garden grows and grows and
grows and becomes the biggest of all the herbs in the garden.
And so the kingdom of heaven is the church as well. This seed
is the seed which birthed the church. The church began from small beginnings,
so small that it came without observation. The Pharisees asked
the Lord Jesus, as when is the kingdom of God coming? And he
told them in Luke 17 20, the kingdom of God is not coming
with signs to be observed. Nor will they say, look, here
it is, or there it is. For behold, the kingdom of God
is amongst you, in your midst. And so it comes as an insignificant
thing. If you take your grain of mustard
seed and place it into the soil of the garden, it's so insignificant
that it basically disappears and becomes nothing. But the
King and his children are the kingdom of God. The church is
the children of God. The church of God are those who
are born of the Spirit and to whom God has made an everlasting
covenant. The Kingdom of God was in their
midst and since the beginning and even today, even though the
Kingdom of God is in the midst of our society, people have no
idea of who they are playing games with when they criticise
our Saviour. And so this church began of old,
didn't it? What didn't have its beginning
just at the time of the Lord Jesus coming and after Pentecost. The Church of God is an eternal
church. Abel was in the Church of God.
In Acts 7.38, We have the description of the
church in the wilderness. And so the church has always
existed. Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
Moses, David were all in the church of God. God's born again
children are the kingdom of heaven. He can't separate the King's
dominion from the King's dominion in the lives of his people. And
yet this world has always regarded the Kingdom of Heaven as nothing. People fit to be persecuted. to be criticized, to be mocked. They have, as Hebrews 10 and
11 talks about them, hiding in caves, the off-scouring of the
world. And in a sense, like the mustard
seed, they're considered the least of all seeds, something
insignificant. We have to remember as we hold
that mustard seed, that thing that looks like a grain of sand,
there is life in it. It's the life that's in the mustard
seed which grows the plant. And the life that's in God's
church is the Spirit of God indwelling His people. It is Christ in us,
the hope of glory. Now that seems like a miracle
beyond our imagining, but God says it's true, that Christ Himself
is indwelling His people, and they in Him. And so what seems
like a mustard seed to the world is actually something which has
all of the power of Almighty God associated with it. And so,
the Lord Jesus has always loved His church and He's always cared
for His church. And so, in spite of all the attempts
of Satan and evil men, throughout time the Lord has grown His kingdom. According to His promise, the
Lord has kept His church as the apple of His eye. And these men
that we talked about, God calls them the spirits of just men
made perfect. And we are surrounded by this
cloud of witnesses. So the work of the gospel and
the spread of God's church and the kingdom is gradual. But He
has grown it consistently. And the Lord added to the church
daily as such should be saved. Into the end of this world, when
all things are truly accounted for what they are, We will behold
this Church and this Kingdom of God has a number which no
man can number. God numbers them perfectly. What
a glorious promise we have in the fulfilment of God's promises
to grow his church from seemingly nothing. So like faith in the
heart, the church and the kingdom of God in this world began as
a very small thing. And this term, the grain of mustard
seed, was a common proverbial saying among the Jews referring
to anything small and insignificant. As a rule, God works in the world
His works in this world are always looked upon by men as trivial,
insignificant. And that's the way it was in
the life of our Lord Jesus. And that's the way the world
has treated His people through all ages and even to today. And so those chosen for this
church were insignificant as well. The apostles were unskilled
fishermen. Jesus was a despised Nazarene,
a crucified Jew. And these apostles who proclaimed
him were people who were insignificant in the eyes of the world. And
then the doctrine that's proclaimed by this church, the doctrine,
the teaching about the Lord Jesus which they preached everywhere
is seemingly an insignificant thing. the doctrines of grace
and life and eternal salvation by the merit and the work of
a crucified substitute. As 1 Corinthians says, for in
the wisdom of God the world by its wisdom didn't know God, and
it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe. The Jews look for signs and the
Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a
stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greek. But
unto those who are called both Jews and Greek, Christ is the
power of God and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness
of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger
than men. For you see your calling, brethren,
that how that not many of you were wise after the flesh, not
many mighty, not many noble are called, but God has chosen the
foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God has
chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things
which are mighty, and the base things of the world, and the
things which are despised. God has chosen, yes, and the
things which are not, to bring to nought the things that are,
that no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are
you in Christ Jesus. who of God is made unto us wisdom
and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. So that let him
who glories glory in the Lord. So the Lord Jesus has promised
that his church will grow like a mustard's plant, seems insignificant
at its beginning, but grows into the biggest plant in the vegetable
garden. And he says this, I will build
my church. upon the rock of Peter's confession,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Gates are
not offensive weapons, they are defensive weapons. Satan's kingdom
and its gates cannot prevail against the Lord Jesus. This mustard seed, this insignificant,
seemingly insignificant doctrine, this insignificant man in the
eyes of this world, He is going to be seen by all humanity to
be God. And so the world has predicted
the end of the church time and time again. And the church to
the world looks a pathetic thing. But the church of the Lord Jesus
Christ is doing very, very well, thank you, in this world. It's
going exactly according to His perfect plans. And we should
never, ever doubt that. The church, the visible church
that proclaims to be Him and seems to be so weak is not necessarily
all the church of God. God's church is growing well
because God is doing the growing. and we should never have any
doubt about it. These apostles have just seen the Lord Jesus
suffer the first waves of persecution which would end in His death
and they have been alongside Him and they are being prepared
as we've seen to go out into this world to proclaim the Gospel
of the Lord Jesus. And so these parables in Mark's
Gospel come at this time when he's preparing his people. And
what he's saying in this parable is that this is going to be successful.
Don't you worry, boys. God is behind what's going on
here. It will be perfectly successful.
But also, thirdly, this parable of the mustard seed speaks about
our Saviour, speaks about His Church, and it speaks about every
believer individually. Eternal life is the seed which
is sown into God's children. It's Christ in you, the hope
of glory. We begin as babes, and as children
we grow up, and we grow to maturity. So the Lord Jesus compared faith
to a grain of mustard seed. We grow in faith, but the life
is in the seed, the life is in what the Lord Jesus has put in
us. So believers are complete in
the Lord Jesus, says Colossians 2.10. But it's not the measure
of our faith that makes us complete. It is Christ in whom we are made
complete. So that growth in grace is not
a growth in self-sufficiency or away from Christ, but as Ephesians
4.15 says, speaking the truth in love, that we grow up into
Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. And so the
Lord Jesus in Matthew 17 and Luke 17 describes mustard seed
is in reference to believers' faith. If they have faith as
small as a grain of mustard seed, they can make mountains move
and uproot trees. So true saving faith begins as
a small thing. The fact is, true believers always
recognize that their faith is small, very small. We often look upon our brothers
and sisters in Christ as being men and women of great faith,
but often people who think they have great faith and talk about
their great faith have no faith at all. Paul was a man of great
faith, but he didn't grow in his own estimation God's plants
grow down into the cultivated soil of the garden to grow up. In 2 Corinthians 10, 17, he says,
but he who glories, let him glory in the Lord. For it is not he
who commends himself who is approved, but whom the Lord commends. So Spurgeon put it beautifully,
the believer knows that his faith is not a weed native to the soil
of his heart, but a rare and exotic plant which has been planted
there by divine wisdom. And he knows that if the Lord
does not nourish it, his faith will die like a withered flower.
He knows that his faith is a perpetual miracle. for it is begotten,
sustained, and preserved by a power not less mighty than that which
raised our Lord Jesus from the dead. In fact, Ephesians 1, 19,
when it's talking about the greatness of the power of God displayed
in this universe, doesn't go to the creation of this extraordinary
universe we live in, but the greatest display of God's power
is in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And that is the power
that God says is at work in those who believe. It may seem as small
as a mustard seed. It may flicker. like a smouldering
flax. It may be broken like a bruised
reed, but in fact it's a miracle, a perpetual miracle. Faith, says
Spurgeon, is so much attacked in this evil day that it is like
a candle kept alight in a cyclone. Its existence in the heart is
like a spark burning in the sea. And then he goes on to say, but
to believe is to float on streams of grace. So it's not our faith,
as I said earlier, it's not the greatness of our faith, but it's
the greatness of our God and Savior, the object of our faith,
that gives the merit and gives the power and gives the working
of faith in the lives of people. As the mustard seed grows, it
grows because of the life that's in the seed. There is a life
in God's people, isn't there? A life that's been placed in
them, an eternal, infinite life. So many people have faith in
their faith, which is really to say that they have faith in
themselves. We mustn't imagine that there's some mystical power
to faith. The power of our faith is the
Lord Jesus, the faithful one. He's the object of our faith. It's not our faith that moves
the mountains of sin or picks up the mulberry tree and moves
it, but it's the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and it's the
power of the Lord Jesus Christ who is the object of our faith.
Now the question is not how much faith do I have, but what is
my faith placed in? So great faith in an idol is
useless. But faith, as tiny as a grain
of mustard seed, in the God of glory, in the Lord Jesus, is
mighty, effectual, saving faith. It's powerful faith. With God,
nothing is impossible. Therefore Jesus said unto them,
If ye can believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. Nothing stands in the way of
God's faith in his people. They cannot be defeated. They
cannot be moved in this world. Nothing, nothing, says Romans
8, will come between them and their sovereign God. And so,
like the man in Mark's gospel, we often cry out to God, Lord,
I believe, please help my unbelief. As God's children grow down,
they grow up. As they grow down in their own
estimation, they grow up. So often we are frustrated in
our Christian lives because we think that we are to get better
and we are to get stronger and we are to become more independent. But the growth that God's children
will find in themselves is the reverse to what the world looks
to and the reverse to what the religious world is saying. Continually
the religious world is saying that by your own activities you
can polish your life and make yourself more acceptable to God. and we are told that we can grow
more holy. But the holiness that God is
talking about is actually causing us to see more and more of our
unholiness and making us more and more long for the holiness
that's in Jesus. And when God ploughs the soil
of our lives and rips up the natural ground righteousness
and rips up our self-worth and makes that soil suitable, We
actually grow more and more out of love with ourselves and more
in love with the Lord Jesus. And this is a mustard seed, it
seems, isn't it? It's from small beginnings to
large attainments because it begins in the Lord Jesus and
it ends in the Lord Jesus. And Christ is the tree of life. Under His branches His people
find a banquet and a shadow. And we read those wonderful words
from Song of Solomon last week. And they are so beautiful, they
are worth repeating again today. In Song of Solomon, chapter 2,
verse 3 and 4. The Lord Jesus is described like
an apple tree among the trees of the wood. So is my beloved
among the sons. I sat down in his shade with
great delight and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought
me to the banqueting house and his banner over me is love. And so he's a God who heals our
backslidings. He heals our weaknesses. And the Lord in Hebrews 12 says
for us to fix our eyes on the Lord Jesus, who's the author
and the perfecter of our faith. And nothing constrains believers,
nothing helps believers more to give themselves to serving
the Lord Jesus than to gaze upon Him and how good He is to His
people. And to look at our brothers and
sisters and see that they are greater than us. Because we see
ourselves for what we are as God opens our eyes. And we see
the faithfulness of our brothers and sisters and we should be
encouraged And we take our eyes off their sin, because whenever
we see the sin of our brothers and sisters, we see that our
sin, which indwells us, is much, much worse than anything they
ever display. There but for the grace of God
go I. The Lord Jesus has been gracious,
unbelievably gracious and long-suffering. to all of His people as He grows
their faith and He nurtures them and His banner over us is love. And one day, one day soon, we
will all see that this mustard seed that was sown into the garden
of this world has actually become the kingdom of our God and He
will be seen to be God over all. for the praise of the glory of
His Father's name and for His dear Son. He has a victory. He's won a victory. He reigns
in heaven right now. Those who can't see it need to
be pitied and not envied.