The Growth of the Kingdom

The scripture reading this morning is taken from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 13.

Luke 13 · chapter mention

And I will be reading verses 18 through 21 and encourage you to turn there.

And if you happen to not have a Bible with you this morning, you can find it in the Pew Bible on page 873.

And if you're here today and you don't own a Bible, you don't have a copy of the scriptures for yourself, I want to encourage you that Pew Bible to take it home with you as our gift to you following this service.

We want you to have it to read and to study it.

While you're turning there, I do want to uh one other reminder, and that is uh there will be an offering for the Gideons following uh the service this morning, uh free will offering if you would like to contribute to that, and and that will be available uh as you as you leave.

Luke chapter 13, beginning in verse 18.

Luke 13 · chapter mention

He said, Therefore, what is the kingdom of God like?

And what shall I compare it?

It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.

And again he said, To what shall I compare the kingdom of God?

It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened.

Don't despise the day of small things.

There's expectations in reality, and this is true for all of us in life.

We have our expectations of how we think how we think things should be, or how we think things ought to be, or our expectations of how things will unfold in the future, and all of us carry about expectations about life, about marriage, about family and children and school and our future.

But what happens when things don't go our way?

We have expectations of how things should be, and to a large degree, our expectations shape our outlook on life.

Uh the things that we expect to happen and we hope to happen or we anticipate happening shape how we look at life and the attitude that we have day to day.

If circumstances exceed our expectations, we rejoice, we celebrate at that, we find ourselves uh excited and happy and perhaps overwhelmed or astounded, amazed at things going beyond what we could have imagined.

But if things don't go our way, if they don't meet our expectations, we're disappointed, we're discouraged, we're disillusioned, we're despondent, we're depressed because we have these expectations, we set up life a certain way, and life isn't meeting those expectations.

Yeah, I couldn't help, without making any commentary on, I couldn't help but notice the difference as I was watching the news coverage of the election, the presidential election, and they showed uh the uh one party as they were celebrating in another party that looked like they were exiting a funeral, that there was such a difference, and I think it was in some ways the degree of expectation there uh for uh the president who won.

There were many within his party who thought that he was going to lose, and so you saw this exuberance of rejoicing when he won.

And for those who thought that uh Mitt Romney was going to win and he didn't, you saw this level of despondency for uh the realization of what actually happened.

And so our expectations to a large degree will influence how we view things and how we respond.

Well, the message this morning is don't despise the day of small things.

And that's really what we're going to be looking at, and the main point of what these two parables will remind us of.

Particularly when we look at the work of God.

When we look at how God is at work in this world, uh so often we have certain expectations of how things are going to happen, and when they don't meet our expectations, we find ourselves discouraged and disillusioned.

But I want to remind us at the outset that God is at work building his church, that God is at work advancing his kingdom, and that God is going to accomplish his purpose.

God will build his church, God's kingdom will come.

And so we can look at life and we can look at circumstances, and we need to remember that God is always in control, ultimately, fully and completely.

There is no uh plans of men that can foil the plans of God.

God is fully and completely in control.

But oftentimes things don't go as we expect, and so we find ourselves discouraged and disillusioned.

I was reminded recently of an Old Testament passage in Zechariah, chapter 4.

Zechariah 4 · chapter mention

So I want to encourage you to uh turn there uh to the book of Zechariah and turn to chapter 4, and uh I want to read for you uh a couple of uh this passage.

Let me give you a little bit of background to it.

Um Zechariah is right after uh uh Hagiah, in case you were looking.

Zechariah chapter 4, and let me set this up a little bit and then make some comments about it.

Zechariah 4 · chapter mention

Uh Zechariah is prophesying, he's declaring God's word, and it is after the Babylonian captivity.

And so uh, if you remember Old Testament history a bit, Israel was divided in 922 BC into a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom.

Uh about 200 years later, in 722 BC, the northern kingdoms were overrun by the Assyrians and they were carried off.

Uh they the Jerusalem was under siege, and God delivered Jerusalem, and yet God's judgment uh was on uh his people, and ultimately judgment was inevitable because of their sin and rebellion.

And so uh in 605 BC, the Babylonians came uh and uh Jerusalem was under siege uh and under a series of siege uh uh sieges until uh in 586 BC, Jerusalem itself was overrun, uh the temple was destroyed, all of the all of the uh utensils and all of the uh the things inside of the temple were taken and carried to Babylon, and there was this Babylonian captivity uh that had been prophesied that was going to last 70 years.

And then uh the Babylonians then were defeated uh by the by the Medes and the Persians in uh 538 BC, and uh the the the Israelites were allowed to go back to Jerusalem and begin to rebuild.

And so we find ourselves here in this post-exilic time, and they're rebuilding uh the temple, and they're laying the foundations and they're rebuilding, and so that's the context of what's happening here.

And Zechariah is given a prophecy, and I won't go into all of the details, but I'll just go ahead and read it beginning in verse one, um, and then just make a few comments on a few of the verses.

It says, And the angel who talked with me came again and woke me like a man who is awakened out of his sleep, and he said to me, What do you see?

I see and behold a lamp stand all of gold, with a bowl on the top of it, and seven lamps on it, with seven lips on each of the lamps that are on top of it.

And there are two olive trees by it, one on the right of the bowl, and the other on its left.

And I said to the angel who talked with me, What are these, my lord?

Then the angel who talked with me answered and said to me, Do you not know what these are?

I said, No, my lord.

Then he said to me, This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts.

Let me stop there for a minute.

Uh, Zerubbabel was the governor at the time, and he was responsible to rebuild the temple.

And so uh he was in charge of it.

And and this is part of the message, without going into all of the symbolism of what was said before, but notice what's said here in verse 6, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit.

And so God is reminding through Zechariah that Zerubbabel was going to oversee the rebuilding of the temple, and it wasn't going to be uh man's doing, it wasn't going to be by their own accomplishment.

God was the one who was going to rebuild the temple through them.

It wasn't by might or power, it was by the Spirit that this was going to be accomplished.

And so God is reminding them at the outset of this of what he's going to do.

And then look at verse 7.

He says, Who are you, O great mountain?

This obstacle that could perhaps be in the way of accomplishing God's plan for the rebuilding of the temple, who are you, O great mountain?

Before Zerubable, you shall become a plane.

Remember, God is the one who's going to accomplish the building of his temple, and nothing was going to get in the way of it, uh, so that what might seem like insurmountable obstacles in the rebuilding uh were not because God was behind it.

And he says, and he shall bring forward the topstone amidst the shouts of grace, grace to it.

Not only was he going to begin this task, he was going to complete it.

It was going to be finished.

Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, The hand of Zerubbabel have laid the hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundations of this house, his hand shall also complete it.

Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you.

For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice and shall see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel.

Well, there were some that despised the day of small things, and the reminder here was that God was accomplishing his purpose in spite of how things might seem at the moment, and so that they needed to take courage, and ultimately they were going to rejoice because God was going to fulfill his purpose.

Now, we know from other passages in the Old Testament that there were people who were not necessarily thrilled by how the temple was progressing.

And let me just read a couple passages to you in Ezra chapter 3, the end of verse 11 through verse 13, it says this, and all of the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid.

Ezra 3 · chapter mention

But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers' houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of the house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sounds of joyful shouts from the sound of the people weeping.

For the people shouted with a great shout, and their sound was heard far away.

So there was a there was different reactions to seeing the foundation of the temple being laid.

Some looked at it, some of these older men who would remember the glory of Solomon's temple, and they're looking at what was before them, and they were weeping with a loud voice because of the small things that they were seeing.

Others, younger people who hadn't seen the glory of Solomon's temple, they were rejoicing because they were seeing the beginning of God's work and the rebuilding of the temple.

And their voices mingled together.

In Hagiah chapter 2, verses 3 and 4, it says something something similar.

It says, Who is left among you who saw the house in its former glory?

How do you see it now?

And these were the older people who had seen it.

Is it not as nothing in your eyes?

And then in verse 4, three times he says, Yet now be strong.

Be strong, O Zerubabel, declares the Lord.

Be strong, O Joshua, the high priest, son of Zohizedak the high priest.

Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord.

And so God encourages them because of the discouragement and the disillusionment that they might be under having remembered the glory of Solomon's temple.

Well, I bring that to light to remind us as an illustration of the reality of our expectations and the disillusionment and discouragement we might feel when life doesn't go as planned by us.

And the same thing can happen in the church, and the same thing can happen in life, but the same thing happened in Jesus' day, and this brings us to the topic that we're going to look at this morning in regards to the kingdom of God.

We need to recognize what Jesus is saying here in relationship to the kingdom of God.

And the kingdom of God is God's rule or reign.

And in one sense, the Bible tells us that God's kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, that God has established, is established as king, and nothing will thwart that, change that, or undermine that.

In another sense, the Bible tells us that the kingdom of God was inaugurated at the first coming of Christ, and we also recognize that the kingdom of God will be consummated or fulfilled when Christ returns.

And so, in one sense, the kingdom of God is always established.

In another sense, we can say that the kingdom of God was inaugurated.

It came with Christ in his first advent, but yet in a different way, we also see that the kingdom of God is something that we look forward to with anticipation.

And in a sense, we are taking part in seeing God's kingdom advance.

And so, but I want us to pause for a few minutes and go back into the New Testament understanding of what their expectations were.

There were small, inauspicious beginnings.

Don't despise the day of small things.

Jesus says, What is the kingdom of God like, and what shall I compare it to?

This was a very pressing question for Jesus hearers.

What is the kingdom of God?

What was their expectation?

For most of us, when we read through the New Testament, we understand to a large degree what God is doing and the unfolding of his plans in Christ.

But we need to understand what the expectations were for those in Jesus' day, and in some ways they were very different than what we might understand.

And so I want for us to look at a couple passages, again in the Old Testament, just as background, in Daniel chapter 2, because I want us to understand a little bit of their expectations and the reality of what God had intended on doing.

Daniel 2 · chapter mention

Daniel chapter 2, and I won't go through this entire passage, but in verse 31, of course, this is the passage Nebuchadnezzar had had a dream, and he had uh had had challenged uh uh the people there uh who were there, the magicians, who were the enchanters, the astrologers, to tell Nebuchadnezzar what his dream was and what the meaning of it was, and they couldn't do it, and so they were uh about to be put to death.

Daniel 2 · chapter mention

Daniel comes forward, and Daniel then is going to uh tell Nebuchadnezzar what his dream was and the interpretation of it.

And let me just look at verse 31, if you have it there in Daniel chapter 2, and read along.

Daniel 2 · chapter mention

You saw, O king, and behold, a great image.

This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening.

The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.

As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on the feet, on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them into pieces.

Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold altogether were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors, and the winds carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found.

But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

And then he goes on, beginning in verse 36, and explains what these are, and commentators will tell us that there are four kingdoms the Babylonians, the Medo-Persians, the Greeks, and then this last uh end times kingdom, this last kingdom that is often identified with Rome.

And so uh the question then becomes um in verse 40, in verse uh 44 and 45, it says this, uh, as it's ex as Daniel is explaining this vision, this dream, he says, and in the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people.

It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever.

Just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hands, and then it broke into pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold.

A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this.

The dream is certain and its interpretation sure.

Now, notice here that these four kingdoms were to go in immediate successive order, at least uh on the surface of it, that's how it would appear as you read this and as it's explained.

And without any break in time, uh then this stone was going to be cut out, and that these this kingdom was going to be destroyed.

Uh, and and uh and the the final kingdom was going to be established.

That was the expectation uh as you read this passage.

Now look in Daniel chapter 7, verses 13 and 14.

Daniel 7:13

And again, there's so much more that could be said here.

Um, so we're just doing a survey.

Daniel chapter 7, verses 13 and 14.

Daniel 7:13

It says, I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the ancient of days and was presented before him, and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, and all peoples, nations, and languages served him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

So in the Old Testament, if you were to read this without the understanding of the New Testament, you would see that uh the kingdom of God was going to come, and that the Messiah was going to come and establish his kingdom, and it was going to be an everlasting kingdom.

And so the Old Testament uh people coming into the New Testament, reading uh the scriptures, would have seen that there were two kingdoms: this present world, and it was going to end decisively when the Messiah came, and then there was going to be the kingdom to come when the Messiah was going to reign forever.

And that was the expectation uh that they had.

And now enter the New Testament and entering Jesus.

And let me just remind us: Jesus was born amidst a perceived scandal.

Now we know that Jesus was born of a virgin, that the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and she was with child, and that she gave birth to Jesus.

But all of the people surrounding them would have thought something different.

They would have thought that uh that Mary uh had committed an act of immorality, and that as a consequence of that, that was why she was this young girl, this young woman was pregnant.

And so these false assumptions and wrong accusations spoken behind uh Mary and Joseph's back.

Jesus was born in poverty.

Uh his parents, even when they gave an offering, they gave an offering uh of of what uh The poor people would give when they presented them at the temple on the eighth day.

Jesus was born in humility.

Not born in a palace, not born with a regal entourage.

He was born in a stable or a cave surrounded by domestic animals.

He was placed in an animal's feeding trough, a manger because there was no place for him.

He was visited by shepherds who were considered at that time lowly people, outcasts in many ways.

Jesus was raised in obscurity.

The son of a carpenter lived for 30 years without much or any notoriety other than when he was 12.

Jesus' ministry didn't fit the expectations that they had in that day.

In fact, think of John the Baptist in Matthew chapter 3.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

John the Baptist, when Jesus was being baptized, he shares his expectation, and accurate, but not in the time frame that he understood.

Matthew chapter 3, verses 11 and 12.

Matthew 3:11

He says this.

He says, I baptize you, talking to those who were coming to him, I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I will not, I am not worthy to carry.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit in fire.

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

Now, just a few chapters later in chapter 11, John is then thrown in prison, and he's hearing about the ministry of Jesus, and he has this expectation of Jesus, the Messiah, who's going to be the conquering king, establishing the kingdom, which was his expectation and the anticipation that he had.

And look beginning in verse beginning in verse 2.

It says, Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?

Now, John, Jesus didn't fit John's expectations of what the Messiah was going to be.

He was waiting for the judgment to come.

He was waiting for Jesus to take power and reign with authority.

And now as he's in prison in the weight of the discouragement and uh and the depression of that, and he's hearing Jesus' ministry and he's and the expectations that he had aren't being fulfilled.

And he asks him, Are you the one to come, or shall we look for another?

And Jesus gives an answer.

He says to him, Go and tell John what you have heard and seen.

The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised, and the poor have good news preached to them.

And then in verse 6, and blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

Why would Jesus say that at the end of it?

Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

Because he wasn't living up to their preconceived ideas of what the Messiah was going to be.

They didn't understand, there was a mystery here that they didn't understand about the kingdom of God, about God's plan of how his kingdom was going to unfold.

They understood the kingdom as when the Messiah came, this present age was going to end, the new age was going to be ushered in.

But that wasn't how things unfolded.

And what we find in the pages of the New Testament is that this present age continues even as there is a breaking in of the kingdom of God into this present order.

And so there's a mystery here.

And so Jesus is then, when they ask, when Jesus says, What is the kingdom of God like?

It is unlike what they had anticipated and expected.

And then he says, it's like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sown in his garden.

And it grew and became a tree.

And the birds of the air made nests in its branches.

They didn't understand that this small, inauspicious beginning to God's kingdom was going to end gloriously and dramatically in the second coming of Christ.

And that God was at work building his kingdom in ways that we don't understand, in ways that we can't always see, in ways that we don't always anticipate.

But there is a purpose and a plan, and God is at work doing it.

And that there is going to be a grand and glorious conclusion to the building of it.

And from something so small, the largeness of what comes from it, and the dramatic growth of it, and this large, unexpected, if you looked at a seed and saw what it produced, if you looked at just this small amount of leaven that the woman would take a piece of dough that she already had leavened, and she would place it into a new piece, and the leaven would spread and permeate through that entire lump of dough.

And so, from inauspicious beginnings, the reality of what was to come.

The grand and glorious conclusion.

And what we're reminded here is don't despise the day of small beginnings.

What they didn't understand, this mystery of the kingdom, uh, that wasn't revealed until in the pages of the Old Testament, that the kingdom was going to be inaugurated by Christ, but the consummation of it was at a later time, that Jesus came now as the suffering servant, but he is going to return in glory and in power.

And his kingdom is going to be established.

So don't despise the day of small beginnings.

The Jesus who lived in obscurity and died in shame died for the purpose of providing salvation and forgiveness of sins.

And the same one who rose from the grave, ascended into heaven, and will return in power to establish his glorious reign.

Don't despise the day of small beginnings.

I think about the impact and influence of the church.

That so often we look at the church and we see all of the problems and the difficulties, and we look around the world and we see all of these different issues and theological differences and all of the problems and the weakness and ineffectiveness that it so often seems to have.

But don't despise the day of small things.

That the church is God's vehicle to accomplish his purpose, and God is going to build his church, God is going to advance his kingdom, and he is going to do it through the seemingly weak and insignificant and marginalized people who name the name of Jesus Christ and God will accomplish his purpose.

Don't despise the day of small things.

Don't despise the day of small things and the message of the kingdom, the message of the gospel of the good news of Jesus Christ.

The Bible tells us it's through the foolishness of preaching that God rescues people and builds his church.

The message of the gospel, which is so simple and straightforward that even a child can understand it.

And oftentimes the message of the gospel, we're embarrassed to share it because of concern of being scorned or mocked or rejected, but don't despise the day of small things.

By sharing the gospel, God transforms the heart.

And somebody hears the message of the gospel and they walk away having prayed, having trusted Christ, having put their faith, transferring it from themselves to Christ.

And you may wonder what difference is that going to make?

Don't despise the day of small things because it makes all the difference in the world.

God is at work transforming hearts and minds and lives through the message of the foolishness of the gospel.

There's a lot more that could be said, but let me just close with a story.

We met him at the park one day.

I was probably nine or ten years old.

He was my brother's age.

He was about two years older than me.

His name meant saint or sainthood, but he was anything but that.

Santos was crazy.

I mean, that's what we thought.

We thought this guy was unbalanced, unstable.

He was a scary dude.

He really was.

I mean, as a little kid, he was he was this like short, stocky guy.

He went through puberty when he was like four.

I mean, he was just like, as a kid, he was just this monstrous, short, stocky guy with short arms, and and um he was a bully too.

I mean, he would bully his way in and and uh he liked to fight, he would get in fights all the time.

Uh he got hurt a lot, he hurt a lot of other people.

Um nobody liked Santos, but everyone was afraid to tell him that we didn't like him because we were scared of him.

I mean, this guy was a he was a mean bully, overbearing.

Um we did not like Santos.

And and and yet he would show up and we'd all pretend like we were his friends because we were afraid of what would happen if he realized we weren't.

And so, but this guy hung around our house for years.

He would stop over random times.

At about 14 or 15, he got kicked out of his house.

We found him sleeping under our picnic table in our backyard.

And um, it was just he as he got older, he began to drink, he began to use drugs, and and um when I moved to to go to college in 1988, I I hadn't heard uh that was the last I had heard of Santos was in 1988.

Um after I had committed my life to Christ, I tried sharing the gospel with him to no avail, and and uh and he was just going from bad to worse.

I'd heard stories from my brother of him being in jail and in prison and and uh drunk and on drugs and all of these other things, and and eventually he just faded from the radar until one day I got a call about seven or eight years ago, and it was Santos.

And as soon as I heard his as soon as I picked up the phone, I knew who it was.

It had been almost 20 years, I knew the voice.

But something was different when I picked up that phone, and he began to tell me about his life and all of the mistakes he made and all of the choices he made.

And then he told me that he moved a few years ago and he met some people who befriended him and began to share the love of Christ with him, began to tell him how Christ could change his life.

And they invited him to church and eventually they led him to Christ, and he was transformed.

And he wanted to call me up because he had remembered, and he my brother had told him that I was in ministry, so he wanted to call me up and tell me what Christ had done in his life through these people that had befriended him.

That God, over the last two or three years, since he had accepted Christ, had turned his life right side up.

He had settled down and he got a job, and he said that he wanted to go into ministry.

Don't despise the day of small things.

God is at work building his kingdom.

We're gonna close with a hymn, and I I want to encourage you, we're going to have a hymn sing uh following the service uh during our Sunday school hours, so let this be preparatory for you and those who are going to be able to stay uh to uh to sing as we uh as we uh worship together.