Mark's Gospel Part 7 - Christ's Growing Kingdom

So Mark's Gospel, chapter four, verses twenty-six to thirty-four.

Heavenly Father, would you open up our eyes as we listen, that we might behold wonderful things in your law?

And we ask that for Jesus' name's sake.

Amen.

So Mark chapter four verses twenty-six to thirty-four.

Let's hear the word of God.

And Jesus said, The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground.

He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows, he knows not how.

The earth produces by itself first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.

But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.

And he said, With what can we compare the kingdom of God?

Or what parable shall we use for it?

It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth.

Yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants, and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.

With many such parables, he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it.

He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately.

To his own disciples he explained everything.

Well, thanks be to God for his true and living word.

By our back door in the Grey family garden is a fig tree.

Last year it produced a grand total of one fig.

The previous year, zero figs.

Now, question.

Are you discouraged by the lack of fruit in your life?

Because the Lord Jesus wants to say to us, Christian people, there will be fruit.

Yes?

Some people stay on the outside.

They won't come near to Jesus, but some come near.

Do you remember back in Mark chapter 3, verse 35?

Mark 3:35

Jesus is building a family.

Now some people are bad soil.

Do you remember too the parable of the soils?

But there will be good soil.

So Mark 4 20, those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit 30fold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.

So there will be men and women and boys and girls who receive the word, they accept it.

They want Jesus with them and want to be with Jesus.

And suffering comes.

Maybe it's cancer or a hard relationship, but they stick with Jesus.

Maybe persecution comes, suffering abuse for following him, but they stick with Jesus and His Word.

Temptations come along, distractions that tug on us, money, or maybe we've got it, maybe we haven't got it.

Other desires, we desire a marriage partner, or we desire children.

Yet temptations don't derail.

There will be good soil, there will be fruit.

That is Christians who persevere, who keep on running the Christian race.

Because the Lord preserves them.

Now remember that, Christian people.

We do not run the race, we do not persevere, we do not bear fruit on our own.

We don't do any of those things apart from Jesus.

The persevering, the fruitful, the growing Christian grows in the hand of Jesus.

And yet, and yet, do you sometimes think, why is there so little fruit?

Seems like there are few conversions, small numbers, few gospel churches.

Why does the fruit often seem so fragile?

Just think about the Church of Jesus.

It is so easily disrupted.

There are pains and problems and sins and divisions just around the corner every minute, and it can leave the Christian really discouraged.

We might be thinking, well, what are we doing wrong?

Should we be doing something different?

And so we come to our passage today in which the Lord Jesus gives us two parables to strengthen us.

They are parables about the kingdom of God.

See that in verse 26?

The kingdom of God is as if.

See that in verse 30?

With what can we compare the kingdom of God?

So just stop for a moment before we dive in.

What is the kingdom of God?

Well, remember Jesus' first words back in Mark 1.15.

The kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe the good news.

The kingdom is the place where Jesus is received as king.

His people have turned from their sin and they have placed their trust in him.

When we get to Mark 3.14, it is the kingdom which is founded upon his twelve apostles.

He built them into a new nation, a new Israel.

And this is the family of Jesus.

Jesus' brothers and sisters and mothers.

In short, the kingdom of God is the church of Jesus Christ.

Okay?

The kingdom of God, it is the church of Jesus Christ.

In Matthew 16, Jesus says to the Apostle Peter, I will build my church and I will give you the keys of the kingdom.

You see the connection?

The church of Jesus Christ is the kingdom of God.

And in these parables, Jesus gives us his perspective, which is the perfect perspective, on his kingdom, on his church.

And he wants to show us things we can't see with our eyes.

He wants to show us how the kingdom grows and what his kingdom will be like.

And just like with all of his parables, they will be incomprehensible to some.

They will be meaningless or they'll be worse than meaningless.

Now I don't want this kingdom.

I don't want this king.

I don't want his word.

That's what someone could be left thinking and feeling.

But to others, to those who follow Jesus and listen and obey, to such ones, the Spirit of God will give rich encouragement.

So parable number one, that's down in verses 26 to 29.

And the question is, how does the kingdom grow?

Okay, how does the kingdom grow?

So we find ourselves out in the field, the farmer scatters seed, and then he does, well, nothing.

He just looks on.

Now in practice, a farmer would get involved.

He would weed and water and use fertilizer, he'd drive off pests.

But this is a parable, it is not a farming manual.

And Jesus' parables often contain deliberate distortions to make a point.

So the farmer in this story does one job and one job only.

He sows and then he goes to bed.

And each day he gets up and just watches, he observes the growth.

Blade, ear, full grain, and then harvest time.

The point, God's church, it will grow.

It will grow from seed through to ripe grain and fruitful harvest.

It will grow.

It is certain.

It's like what Jesus says in Matthew 16, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against her.

At the very end of time, the bridegroom will have a bride at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

So along the way, those discouragements, those weaknesses, those stumbles of the Church of Christ, those things do matter, and they matter most of all to Jesus.

He's the Lord of the church.

He walks amongst the lampstands of his church, but they are not the end of the story.

The growth comes in the Lord's time.

Jesus here emphasizes the process, seed, sprouts, blade, ear, and then only then the full grain.

It implies time, it's slow.

We ought to believe that good things come to those who wait.

But waiting is dead hard.

At an individual level it's hard.

My growth in holiness is so slow.

At a local church level, there are ups and downs.

There are hard seasons.

Our church family, Emmanuel, we're old enough now to have known both encouraging and also slow and painful times.

And as we look at the Lord's church around our nation and around the world, it often seems so slow and painful.

There are scandals and divisions, and sometimes it seems backwards and then forwards.

Things like farming, gardening, they require patience and contentment along the way.

We've got a field next to us, there are three oak trees in it.

They have probably been growing in that spot for 200 years.

Now what about the church?

Jesus has been growing her for 2,000 years, and he's not finished yet.

We're called to patience, to contentment with the Lord's slow and gradual growth, and this is his normal way.

Now we long for what is sometimes called revival, extraordinary seasons of growth.

But in God's providence, never long lasting.

But we are assured here there will be a harvest.

There will come a time to send in the sickle.

The Lord's way of growing his church works like this certainly, slowly, in his time, and at the end of it all there'll be a rich, glorious, beautiful harvest.

How will this growth happen?

Well, it is the work of God through the word of God.

There is one funny little detail in the parable.

In the end of verse 27, we read this.

Except this is not about farming.

Christian people, we sleep and we rise, we look at the Church of Jesus Christ and we see growth.

It almost seems to be happening organically as if the earth produces by itself.

And this is so important.

Kingdom growth is not in our control.

Kingdom growth is not in our control.

Church leaders are sometimes under real pressure to deliver growth.

There is a whole industry out there, the church growth industry, selling techniques and strategies to deliver church growth.

Many years ago, a friend of mine was called to a new ministry post.

He was given the job of, and here's the quote, growing the church from 400 to 600.

And you've got to say, that is just lunacy.

Because kingdom growth is not in our control.

One little New Testament nugget makes that point for us.

Nowhere does the New Testament say that we grow God's kingdom.

Literally, nowhere.

Nowhere does it say in the New Testament that we grow God's kingdom.

We do things like receive the kingdom, inherit the kingdom, enter the kingdom.

We do not build it, we do not grow it.

And the point of the parable, the earth grows by itself.

Literally, in the original language, automate.

The earth grows by itself.

Or rather, we should more accurately say kingdom growth comes from the Lord, he gives the growth.

But it's profoundly mysterious, the when and the where.

Holy Spirit, He blows where He wills.

But as for the means of this growth, well, the Lord uses the seed that is sown.

And we're told here in this chapter, aren't we, so clearly, the seed that is sown is the preached word.

It is his word.

So, in other words, our God has ordained the ordinary means of grace.

Reading and expounding the scriptures, plus the visible words of baptism and the Lord's Supper, together with fervent prayer that the Lord would be at work, there is where He chooses to place His power.

The word of the Lord and the power of the Lord.

We don't need to force it or manipulate things or manipulate people or try to get the mood just right or have a fancy band or some special new technique.

Just the word preached, the word visible, and prayer for the Lord's blessing of the word.

This parable it should encourage us to have confidence in the ordinary and supernatural means of grace.

And so we sow.

We keep on sowing.

And here is where our activity fits in.

We sow and we trust God to give the growth.

So we give the word, we take it seriously, especially in the gathering of the church, but also as we seek to be Bible sharers in the word, in the world.

And here is how he will bring that final great harvest, and there will be a harvest in his good time.

And along the way, we do not stress about the size of things.

Maybe God gives us an amazingly fruitful season.

Maybe just a very, very few small green shoots.

Well, that is the Lord's job, not ours.

Now, on to that second parable, down in verses 30 to 32 that follows right on.

We're asked this question: what will the kingdom be like?

Well, we're still on the farm, and now Jesus gets us to imagine a tiny black mustard seed.

It's a common picture for things that were tiny.

You know, think of, I don't know, something that's as small as an atom or a molecule, or here a mustard seed.

But then Jesus gets us to imagine this tiny seed now full grown into a plant or even a tree, bigger than anything else in your backyard.

Now, mustard plants, they're actually not bigger than anything else.

But Jesus is not giving a horticulture lesson.

Remember, it's a parable, and he is he's deliberately exaggerating.

He wants to make a point about contrasting sizes.

So here is something that starts tiny and it finishes vast.

I think how the kingdom of God, the church, began.

There was Jesus and his disciples, included people like, well, sinners and tax collectors, a couple of hot heads, a freedom fighter, a collaborator.

A bit later on, the Apostle Paul, who confesses he was actually a very poor public speaker.

He was distinctly unimpressive.

Yet the kingdom grows.

We're to imagine a vast tree.

And the picture that Jesus paints here, it comes from the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel, Ezekiel 17.

A mighty kingdom grows and other nations come under it for refuge.

And here is the greatest kingdom of all, a vast and extraordinarily powerful kingdom, greater than all of the other trees, all of the other earthly powers and kingdoms.

And by the end of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, we have a multitude that cannot be numbered from every tribe and nation and tongue.

One of the wonderful things about Jesus' kingdom, there is room for everyone who wants to come in.

Not in the family of Jesus yet.

Well, look, there is plenty of room for you for anyone, for anyone who comes to Jesus who repents and believes in him.

But it starts small.

The Lord uses few and small and weak.

We should not despise the day of small things.

Faithful Christian ministry, it is so often small and unimpressive.

But there is more going on than meets the eye.

We're not to be discouraged.

So if the first of these parables is a call to patience, this second one is a call to hope.

It is a call to hope.

So get on with the work, sow the seed and don't lose heart.

There will be, there really will be, a vast and a mighty harvest.

But there is something else about Jesus' kingdom.

It is not what we expect.

It will be a mighty mustard bush, not a mighty cedar.

It will be vast, but it will be a vast mustard bush.

Jesus looks at the trees, well, both in his world and the trees in the Bible, and he deliberately chooses not a noble cedar, but something very mundane and very ordinary.

And it tells us something of the nature of Jesus' kingdom.

It will not be like the great worldly kingdoms.

Think of our great kingdoms and empires.

There's outward pomp and show, they're built on brute power and on wealth.

Here is a kingdom with a crucified king.

He makes himself weak, or at least appear weak.

He'll make himself foolish or at least appear foolish.

The kingdom is vast, but it's ruled over by the crucified lamb upon the throne.

Now that seems impossible, doesn't it?

You can have rule and power and a lamb who died.

But so beautifully, this is the way of the Lord.

And the followers of this king, well, Jesus says things like this to us.

He says, You want to be great in the kingdom.

Well, you must be a servant, you must be a slave.

So the way of Jesus, and maybe some of us are just considering it.

We're thinking, you know, should I join this king?

Should I join his service?

Well, in following this king, it's not about pleasing ourselves, but about humility.

It's about sacrifice and service, because that's what Jesus is about.

It's about offering a welcome for all and an open home.

And Jesus says to you and to me, that is the way of greatness, because that is Jesus' way.

Because his kingdom, his church, it looks like a great mustard tree, not a noble cedar.

And that should encourage us when life in the kingdom seems small or a bit rubbish, even.

Or when sin breaks out in the church, or just seems hard, the way of Christ, the way of service, it's hard.

We're not to judge God's kingdom by all we see with our eyes.

We need the perspective of the king.

God that grows the church, and he will grow it very, very large.

And so we can give ourselves to the work of the king.

And especially to this work of seed sowing.

Martin Luther, he had a way with words, and he put this really beautifully.

He wrote this I simply taught, preached, wrote God's word.

Otherwise, I did nothing.

And then, while I slept or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that never a prince or emperor did such damage to it.

I did nothing.

The word did it all.

I did nothing.

I left it to the word.

So let's keep at it with patience and with good hope.

Heavenly Father, we ask that you would do this particular word in us.

For Jesus' name's sake.

Amen.