Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven

If you'd open up your Bibles to Matthew chapter 13, we're just going to be looking at three verses today.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

Three verses that have two parables in them.

And they're verses 31 through 33.

And I'm going to read them for you.

This is the Word of God.

These are the very words of Jesus.

He put another parable before them saying,

The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field.

It's the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown, it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree.

So that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.

He told them another parable.

The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour till it was all leavened.

I'll never forget 2003.

I was a teenager. Just kidding.

I'm not that old that I can't hear.

Well, 2003, if you remember it, the invasion of Iraq.

And I remember seeing on the news, sortie after sortie of planes and cruise missiles being launched on Baghdad.

And if you're any way familiar with military doctrine and strategy, that attack, that advance was characterized by what's called shock and awe.

Give them everything you've got.

It's also known as overwhelming force.

It's rapid dominance.

It's fast.

It's fierce.

And it is forceful.

And the idea behind it is you give them everything they've got so that they think you're invincible and you just wilt them.

Shock and awe.

There were a group of Jews in Jesus' day who, when they heard about the Messiah coming, they thought they would come.

He would come with shock and awe.

He would establish a new kingdom in Israel with power.

Exercising dominion.

Taken over.

But what we learn from the Gospel of Matthew in the first four chapters is that Jesus is anything but shock and awe.

He was born in a manger in Bethlehem out of Nazareth.

What good comes out of Nazareth?

And then in his inauguration speech, his kingdom manifesto in the Sermon on the Mount, do you remember the first beatitude?

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

How's that for shock and awe?

And then Jesus demonstrates his authority in chapters 8 and 9.

He doesn't show his authority by regime change.

Kicking out the Romans.

Setting up a new economic system.

He exercises authority to deliver people from the power of sin.

To establish a kingdom of gathering people by his grace from darkness into the kingdom of the beloved Son.

He sends out his disciples in chapter 12.

Or excuse me, chapter 12.

That's right.

And then we also see in 11-12 this rising tension.

Actually sent out his disciples in chapter 10.

But in 11 and 12 there's these rising tensions.

John the Baptist even is asking, are you the one, the Messiah?

And then the Pharisees push back on him.

And there's at least four conflicts.

And tensions are on the rise.

Jesus isn't playing according to the rules of the religious establishment.

And they don't like it.

And a point of conflict is this.

He's claiming to be the Son of Man.

That's Messiah language.

But the kingdom that he's talking about is in sharp contrast to the kingdom that many Jews were expecting.

He didn't come in shock and awe the first time.

His was not a shock and awe campaign.

It's more like a sow and grow campaign.

More like a hide and knead through the flower campaign.

In the two parables we're looking at this morning,

he doesn't liken the spread of the kingdom to a military advance.

He likens it to gardening and baking.

Now, he came as a suffering servant.

And when a suffering servant sets up a kingdom,

it's going to be characterized by him.

This morning, I want to ask you this question.

How do you expect the saving reign of God?

The active saving reign?

God's current working to draw sinners to himself.

How do you expect the active reign of God to spread?

To advance?

Are you thinking shock and awe?

Or are you thinking sow and grow?

Jesus definitely clarifies this for us.

Instead of a fast, fierce, enforceful, rapid dominance of the kingdom,

Jesus is an advocate of a slow, gentle, sacrificial, gradual growth of the kingdom.

That's what we see in these two parables.

We're going to look at these two parables this morning.

I'm just going to walk us through each one.

And then we're going to look to what Jesus is actually saying.

I'm going to try to explain what they mean.

And I'm going to bring them to bear in the 21st century for us right now living in the city of Kenosha.

So what I want you to see is that the kingdom of heaven, this active saving grace of God,

of drawing people from every tribe and nation, it's not a shock and awe growth.

It's gradual.

It's pervasive.

And so now let's look at the first parable, the parable of the mustard seed in verses 31 and 32.

Now just to clarify, in just a little while in Matthew, he's going to compare a mustard seed to faith.

But that's not what he's making the comparison in this parable.

In this parable, he's comparing a mustard seed to the people of God,

the new people of God who's been brought into the kingdom by God's grace.

And so in the mustard seed, this parable, Jesus likens the active saving reign of God,

this drawing in by God's grace of people into under his reign.

He compares it to a guy that takes a mustard seed and drops it into the ground in his field.

And so again, it's a comparison of gardening.

And if you want to look quickly at verse 24, the start in verse 31 rings of verse 24.

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.

And then verse 31, the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field.

Very similar.

A lot of sowing going on.

Even the first parable is a parable about sowing, about a seed being hidden in the ground.

In verse 32, Jesus begins to bring out the unique contribution of this particular parable.

He's wanting to emphasize something about the growing saving reign of God.

He starts by saying in verse 32, it's the smallest of all seeds.

He's comparing the start of the kingdom to this mustard seed.

And I'm not sure if you've ever seen any kind of things written about a mustard seed before.

We've actually got a picture of it.

Randy, are you back there?

You want to throw that?

Oh, Andy?

There it is.

That's a mustard seed.

It's about one or two millimeters wide.

It's the size of a pinhead.

And so Jesus is picking that mustard seed for a reason.

He wants you to be thinking it starts really small.

It's tiny.

And so he's likening the start of the kingdom to this little mustard seed dropped into a hole in the field of a guy.

And then in verse 32, it goes on.

We see the word but, which signals some contrast.

But when it has grown, it is bigger than all the garden plants.

Now, when you hear that word garden plant, you're like, well, what is he talking about?

Well, that word garden plant comes from a Greek word that actually means to dig.

And so the idea here is it's a plant that needs to be digging in order to plant it.

And so for us, it would be equivalent of saying like a potted plant that you take home from steins or loaves and you've got to dig a hole and drop it in.

That's the kind of plants he's talking about.

So we're talking about a cultivated field or garden.

And Jesus is saying that this mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds, the size of a pinhead, when it grows, it grows larger than all the garden plants.

It gets big.

It's the smallest of all that grows to be the largest of all.

Emphasis.

Jesus is making a point.

He's helping you get the scale of the growth of this seed.

And he goes on to say that it becomes a tree.

Technically, a mustard seed would grow into a tree that's about 8 to 12 feet.

I think we got a picture of one, Andy.

And this tree, this mustard seed tree is probably about, do we have a picture of that?

There we go.

And that one's about 20 feet.

But what you need to understand is a mustard tree, it's kind of a bushy tree.

And so if it's 8 to 12 feet tall, it's also 8 to 12 feet wide.

It's big.

It's prominent.

And so what Jesus is saying here is he's making a comparison.

He's drawing out scale over time.

He says it starts like a pinhead and results in this plant that's 8 to 12 feet high and 8 to 12 feet wide.

It's extraordinary.

And so the comparison he's making, he's saying the kingdom of heaven is like this little seed that grows over time into this big tree.

And he's comparing it to the saving reign of God.

This is not shock and awe.

This is gardening over time.

This is cultivation.

It's not shock and awe.

It's sow and grow.

And so the emphasis of the parable is on extraordinary growth of the kingdom.

Now let's move to the parable of the leaven.

Oh, and by the way, this kind of parable about the kingdom, for those people who would be expecting messianic shock and awe,

they'd be like, huh, what, huh?

Seriously?

Now let's look at the leaven.

Verse 33, the kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour till it was leavened.

All leavened.

Okay, confession, I am a fan of the great British baking show.

I am.

I watch it.

Last night, Jenny and I watched Paul, this pretty impressive dude.

He made chiabata bread.

And part of making the chiabata bread is he took some leaven, which is this dry additive, and he had someone drop it in.

And then they mixed it up.

And then it grew.

But the leaven that Jesus is talking about is not a dry additive.

The leaven that Jesus is talking about is more like Amish friendship bread.

Has anybody received Amish friendship bread?

We get it.

And basically what somebody does is they hand you a zip block bag with like this gooey stuff in it.

And it like squishes.

And if you look at it, it's kind of doughy, wet, with bubbles forming in it because this dough is already fermenting.

There's already a chemical reaction going on.

And so what you do with Amish friendship bread is you get the bag and then you throw it down and you add stuff to it.

And you mix it all up.

And then you take a little remnant off that and put it in a zip lock bag for the next batch of Amish friendship bread you make.

And then you put that in the oven and you grow it.

It rises and you eat it.

And then you have another bag for the next week.

That's what's happening here.

And so the leaven that's being worked through the dough, it's actually a fermenting remnant of the dough the week before.

And it would have been a small piece.

And so what Jesus is saying here is that the kingdom, this people that God is drawing in by His grace and gospel into His reign,

it starts as this fermenting remnant of dough from last week's bake.

And then what He does is this woman takes that small remnant and she hides it in the dough

and then she works it through three measures of flour till it is all leavened.

Now, when you read three measures of flour, I'm guessing you're like thinking,

oh yeah, three cups, that would be very interesting.

But you've got to understand that word measure for three measures of flour,

that word measure is talking about a Hebrew measuring unit called a seah.

And what that is is the equivalent of eight quarts or two gallons.

And so three seahs of flour equals six gallons of flour.

Twenty-four quarts of flour.

That still doesn't make sense to me.

Because when I hear gallon, I think of gasoline.

I don't think of flour.

But I do get a five-pound bag of flour.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Those five-pound packages?

You can use them as weights to exercise.

So basically, here's the equivalent.

Here's what Jesus is saying.

These three measures, it's the equivalent of five five-pound bags of flour.

In other words, it's 25 pounds of flour.

Now, I'm not a baker.

I watch baking on TV.

I know that's a lot of flour.

I know that's a lot of kneading through leaven to make the whole thing leavened.

I even know that.

And what Jesus is again doing here is He's showing extraordinary scale.

That this little leaven, this little fragment, this little fermenting dough gets worked through all 25 pounds of flour.

There's another word that you need to see.

Did you catch that?

The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour.

All throughout these parables, there is a hiddenness theme of the kingdom.

It's implied in the dropping of seeds into ground and covering it over.

We see it here.

We will also see it in the hidden treasure next week.

We're going to see in the pearl of great price, which you don't see, discover until you find it.

It's going to show up in the treasure that is unseen but brought out by the master of the house for all to see.

There's a hiddenness theme.

Back to the leaven.

She hid it.

She placed it in it so you couldn't see it.

And she leavened the whole dough until it was all leavened.

Jesus is saying this parable is this story is of this woman who works it all the way through the 25 pounds of flour.

So the parable of the mustard seed is about extraordinary growth.

The parable of the leaven is about extraordinary permeation, pervasiveness.

Similar but different.

So the kingdom of heaven is about extraordinary growth and extraordinary pervasiveness in the world.

Now let's move towards asking what all this stuff means.

Well, both parables have a few things in common.

And that's why Jesus coupled these.

But what you need to know is he doesn't give an explanation for these two.

He gave an explanation for the parable of the soils.

He gave an explanation for the parable of the weeds.

But here he doesn't give an explanation.

And so we need to tread on careful ground here.

We don't want to force a meaning on this.

But there are some significant clues from the context that should give us confidence in making some connections.

And the first connection I want you to see is this.

Did you notice that both in the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the leaven,

that there's one actor, there's one person,

the man who sows the mustard seed and the woman who takes the leaven and works it through?

If you look back at verse 24,

the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.

That's the parable of the weeds.

And when Jesus explains it in verse 37, he says,

the one who sows the good seed is the son of man.

It's a big clue.

And then we read in verse 34 and 35,

and this is that part of these eight parables in which Jesus is making sense of it all.

Or Matthew is, he says,

all these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables.

Indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable.

Thus was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet.

I will open my mouth in parables.

I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.

It's a fulfillment of Psalm 78 too.

That's the quote.

And what we're learning here is that Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom in parables

was him throwing out seed.

And those who responded to that, they're the mustard seed.

They're the leaven.

And so what I'm suggesting is that the one sowing the mustard seed,

even the woman working the dough,

it's pointing to the son of man,

the Lord of the harvest,

the baker of the worldwide kingdom.

But it's not just a primary actor we see here.

There's this emphasis on smallness and hiddenness.

That mustard seed is one to two millimeters.

And that remnant of fermenting dough was small.

And so the emphasis is on smallness,

starting small and hidden.

That mustard seed was hidden in the ground.

And that remnant of dough was hidden in the flour, that leaven.

And so there's emphasis on both smallness and hiddenness.

And Jesus is saying the kingdom, the saving reign of God,

as I have inaugurated,

it starts small and hidden.

That's the way of the kingdom.

And not only do we see that,

it's transformational over time.

We have a one to two millimeter seed becoming a tree

that's eight to twelve feet tall and wide.

We have this small fermenting piece of dough

that is worked through 25 pounds of flour.

There's transformation that takes place over time.

So it starts small, it starts hidden,

and it grows and it spreads,

and it becomes something extraordinary.

The smallest of all seeds grows to be the largest of all plants.

It's gloriously prominent.

The littlest of leaven gets through all 25 pounds of flour.

It's pervasive.

And so what Jesus is saying here is that

He is causing His people,

those who are brought into the kingdom

from the very beginning,

which started small and hidden,

He is growing it and working it through the world.

So that it's growing and growing and growing

and it can become like a tree.

And it's spreading and spreading and spreading

all the way through the flour

of every tribe, tongue, and nation.

The parable is not about shock and awe.

These parables are about sowing and growing.

They're about baking.

The active, saving reign of God

starts small and grows big.

This is a correction

for those who are expecting

a shock and awe Messiah.

He's saying, I don't roll that way.

My way is not fast but slow.

My way is not fierce but gentle.

My way is not forceful but sacrificial.

He gave His life as a ransom for many.

It gives us a sense of direction

in our own ministry here,

Christ the King Church.

It informs the way that we do things.

It informs kind of like the time frame we're on.

It informs in terms of our expectations.

It informs too, it's like,

how do we think about our city?

Now to bring this to bear,

historically speaking,

the kingdom started really small.

Jesus, His disciples,

maybe 120 altogether,

in a podunk town around Galilee,

small, concentrated,

and over two millennia,

the kingdom has grown

and grown

and grown.

And so today,

Christianity

has the largest number of adherents worldwide.

Now, we can debate

whether all people claiming to be Christians

are actually Christians.

We can debate that.

But I just want to point to the fact that

this parable is somehow prophetic.

In 2012, there was 2.2 billion people

on the planet

that claimed to be a follower of Jesus.

Now that's extraordinary growth

over two millennia.

From 120 to 2.2 billion,

Jesus knew what He was talking about.

And what that points to is,

He's right on time.

He's bringing about His purposes

as He said He would.

He's grown the kingdom

just like He said He would.

And what this means for us is this.

We live at a specific time

of His global harvest.

We're not on our time.

We're on His time.

Now, if you're here

and you're realizing

that you're not in the kingdom,

that you haven't bowed your knee

to King Jesus

and by grace received the salvation

He alone offers,

today is the day of salvation.

The time for you is to repent

and believe

and come join us

in the kingdom of heaven.

But let's say you're a follower of Jesus

and you're realizing,

you know what?

I'm not living on His time.

I'm living on my time.

The call to you is

move on to His time.

Be thinking about harvest.

Be thinking about spread

in the city.

Leaven.

Here's what will happen.

It will change your priorities.

You'll see people differently.

You'll want to use your money

in different ways.

You'll want to spend your time

in ways that are advancing kingdom

according to the King.

Now, there are some of you in here

that have been laboring hard.

You've been sharing your faith.

You've been knocking on doors.

You've been initiating with people.

You've been putting out

a lot of effort

out of a wonderful desire

to see people come to Christ,

to see people brought into our church,

and you may be thinking,

you know what?

We're three and a half years old

as a church.

I thought we would have

700 converts by this time.

What's going on?

Why isn't this thing happening?

Why aren't we this

mixed ethnically church

that we're so wanting to be?

Why isn't this happening?

Well, the answer is

Jesus is right on time.

He's expanding His kingdom.

Ministry's slow.

People changing is hard.

It takes time.

Just over the last couple weeks,

I've talked to two people

who've become Christians

in the last year,

but it was a longer process.

It takes time.

And so the question is,

are we on His time?

Are we trusting Him?

Now, we pray for outpourings

of the Spirit

in phenomenal works,

but His typical MO

is slow, gentle,

and sacrificial.

But we're on His time.

Now, that should ring a bell

in you as well.

If the kingdom is spreading

like I'm suggesting it is,

we're in a different place now

than when we were

2,000 years ago,

do you know what that means?

We're getting closer

to His return.

He's coming back.

We're one day closer.

Not one day farther.

He's coming back.

Now, presently speaking,

all throughout the globe,

God is at work.

His active,

His active,

saving reign

is reaching

into different people groups

all along the planet.

Now, if you're taking notes,

I want you to jot down this.

The Joshua Project.

When you get home today

or early this week,

Google

the Joshua Project.

What the Joshua Project does

is it tracks

the progress

of world evangelization.

And it tracks it

along two lines.

Just the number

of people

who've been reached

with the gospel

as well as

the number of people groups

that have been reached

with the gospel.

And a people group

is a distinct group

of people

by language,

ethnicity,

and culture.

But,

here's what you need

to know.

According to

the Joshua Project,

42% of the world's

population,

which is 3.11

billion people,

have not been reached

with the gospel.

And so,

is the kingdom spreading?

Yes.

Has everybody been reached?

No.

The Joshua Project

says that there are

16,584 different

people groups

around the planet.

Distinct people groups.

And it says that

6,733 are presently

unreached.

And what they mean

by unreached

is that

an unreached people group

is dependent

on someone

from outside

of their group

to come in

and share the gospel

of Jesus Christ

with them.

And so,

presently,

there's 40%

of the world's

people groups

that don't have

a witness to them.

They're waiting

for someone to come

and tell them

about the saving reign

of Jesus Christ,

about the grace

of the Almighty God

who offers them

their sinners

in need of salvation.

You know,

America

is actually listed

on the Joshua Project

as having its own

unreached people groups.

And it's very interesting.

The unreached people groups

in America,

Native Americans,

immigrants,

and when you look

at it on the map,

the hot spots

are in big cities

in our nation.

This is why

we have missionaries.

And this is why,

one of the big reasons

why we have mission partners

as a church.

This is why

we want to get

alongside of

Josh and Christy Anderson

and the work

that they're doing

in Asia.

We partner with them

so that they can

bring the gospel

to an unreached

people group.

That's why we saddle up

next to and partner

with Chelsea Zeman

so that she can

go to Nicaragua

and share the gospel

with people

who presently

don't know about Jesus.

And that's why

we partner up

with Kyle Zeman

who's working

at Bradley University

in Illinois.

You might,

Bradley University,

that's in America.

Well, it's like

a foreign land

to us now.

There's something else

I want to make you aware of.

In some countries

around the world,

the kingdom of heaven

is presently small

and hidden

because of persecution

and suffering.

Recently,

we received as a family,

we get Christianity Today

and part of the latest

Christianity Today

was this magazine

by Open Doors.

And this,

Open Doors

is an organization

that tracks the persecution

of the church

around the world.

And it shared

the top 50 countries

that are persecuting

Christians around the world.

Do you know

what the number one

country was?

North Korea.

And so,

in this country

of North Korea,

there are 24,

25.4 million people.

300,000 are Christians.

That's 1% of the population.

Now, when you hear me say

North Korea,

you might instantly go,

well, third missile test.

Are they going to get

a missile,

intercontinental ballistic missile

to bring a warhead

to the United States?

Tension's rising.

China's involved.

South Korea,

Japan,

the United States.

Saber rattling going on.

But the reality is,

there are worshipers

in North Korea

that don't have

a gospel witness.

And there's 1%

of the population

that God has placed there

and He is going to

leaven that 100,000 through.

And it's going to start

with them showing up

in prisons

and sharing with people

gospel in prisons

and in outhouses.

and the gospel's

going to spread.

God's doing a global work.

He's advancing the gospel,

the saving reign of God

all over the place.

It's an active work.

Locally.

What about our city?

What about this little section

of God's field

we call Kenosha?

This little segment

of the flower?

Well, for those of us

who have been,

by God's grace,

brought into the kingdom,

we're leaven

to the city.

We're leaven.

You know,

leaven has this

dynamic additive.

You put leaven

into flour

and what happens is

it brings with it

a chemical reaction

that brings about

a change.

It gives rise

to the dome.

My friends,

we're God's leaven.

We have been placed

in this city

and we're being

needed through.

It's no coincidence.

You're in the neighborhood

you're in.

You're in the school

you are.

You're in the organizations

you're involved with.

The businesses.

It's all part of God's plan

to expand His kingdom.

Wherever you are,

the Lord wants to use you.

He wants to use you

as leaven.

Leaven.

It's not shock and awe.

It's slow.

It's gentle.

It's sacrificial.

The dynamic that we bring

with us into our neighborhoods,

it's not of us.

We bring in the gospel dynamic.

It's God's divine change agent.

And when we share the gospel

with people,

this catalyst,

what happens is

God raises

dead people

to life.

There are a whole lot

of dead people

in this city.

Spiritually dead.

And God has spread us

like a leaven

and located us

very specifically.

It's about proximity,

it's about time,

and it's about a dynamic.

And we got the dynamic.

It's the gospel.

We get to tell people

about it.

This morning,

I want to ask,

how do you expect

the kingdom of heaven,

the saving reign of Jesus,

to advance

around the world

or in our city?

Is it shock and awe?

No, it's not shock and awe.

It's slow.

It's gentle.

It's sacrificial.

It's so ingrowed.

Let me urge you

to do a couple things.

Start prayer walking.

It's getting nice out.

Walk around your neighborhood.

Start praying for people.

Start praying for your neighbors.

God will use it for good

to help you see as he sees.

Last week,

the leadership team,

we broke into twos

and we drove around

the city of Kenosha

for two hours.

And we drove around saying,

who are the people

that God has brought

to this city?

And what does God

want to do in this city?

Go out on a date.

Drive around town.

See the neighborhoods

and the people

waiting.

The kingdom of heaven

is not shock and awe.

It's not fast.

It's slow.

It's not fierce.

It's gentle.

It's not forceful.

It's sacrificial.

Our king is the suffering servant.

And he's right on time.

Let's get on his time.

Will you pray with me?

Amen.

Amen.

Lord Jesus,

you are the Lord of the harvest.

We thank you for these parables

and we thank you

for what you've been doing

over the course

of the last two millennia.

You are the risen Christ

who's sovereign over all.

You're wanting to gather

for yourself a people

from every tribe,

tongue, and nation.

We pray, Father,

for your gospel to advance.

We pray for our brothers

and sisters in North Korea

who presently suffer,

suffer harshly.

Would you give them strength?

Would you work them through

like leaven that country?

God, would you bring change?

Would you turn that country

around from the inside out?

God, we pray for our city.

We ask that, God,

there would be an outpouring

of your spirit

that would give us

the boldness

and the confidence

and the perseverance

to faithfully proclaim

of what Christ has done

for sinners.

That, God,

would you help us

to see where we've been located

not as coincidence,

but providence.

And that we would be a people

that are making the most

of the time,

your time.

Lord, we thank you so much

for calling us as a church

to be light in a dark place,

to be salt in a decaying world,

and to be leaven

in this big lump of dough

called Kenosha.

God, we would ask

that you would bring

men and women,

boys and girls,

into our church

who are just fresh

in terms of coming to Christ.

Would you give us

the privilege of sharing

the gospel with many

and seeing many respond?

Would you build your kingdom,

Lord, we ask?

Thank you for your word,

Lord Jesus,

and it's your name we pray.

Amen.