The Stories That Jesus Told
Sermon # 18
“The Parable of Mustard Seed”
or
God Works Mightily Through Small Things!
Mark 4:30-32
If you are like me,
sometimes you get discouraged. January will mark the completion of 19 years (21 ½ as a member of the staff) as the pastor of this great church. In that
time I have preached over 3,600 messages, conducted 62 weddings and 118 funerals. And yet
sometimes I stop and ask myself, “Am I doing any good here?” I look out over your faces and wonder what is
going on in your hearts. I ask myself, “Am I really impacting their lives?”
We all tend measure our accomplishments in this life by the world’s standards; that
is by tangible things that we can see! Sometimes not matter how hard you have worked; what
has been accomplished seems so small and insignificant. That is how our efforts for God
are attacked by the enemy, either through discouragement or what we perceive as a lack of
results.
As hard as it is for us to conceive today,
the ministry of Jesus was a major disappoint-ment to many when He was on the earth. The
Jewish people expected the Messiah to come like lightning! They expected that the Messiah
would come and unite the people, gather a vast army, destroy the Roman enemy, and
re-establish a kingdom of great magnificence, to make Israel a world power. They were
looking for something big to happen. They wanted glory and grandeur because they believed
that this was the way God worked but instead they got Jesus.
As we are reminded in this season
(Christmas) Jesus was born in a stable, raised in town of little significance called
Nazareth, resisted by the religious leaders and ignored by most of the political leaders.
Jesus only had a small group of followers who were nothing more than uneducated fishermen,
tax collectors and other social outcasts. This didn’t look like the Kingdom of
God, as they understood it. To them it looked like it was doomed to failure and for
many of the disciples the temptation was to “jump ship.” After all nobody wants to be a part of
something small and insignificant because that means it is not successful. God
couldn’t be in it because bigger is better, right? Jesus wanted to correct this erroneous
under-standing. It is a correction we need to hear and heed today because people still
tend to gravitate toward that which is bigger while disparaging that which is smaller. To
avoid this error we need to hear the lesson of the Parable of the Mustard Seed in
our series “The Stories That Jesus Told.”
The parable begins in Mark
4:30 where we read, “Then He said, "To what shall we
liken the kingdom of God? Or with what parable shall we picture it? (31) It is like a
mustard seed which, when it is sown on the ground, is smaller than all the seeds on earth;
(32) 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."
In His day, there was a common expression
used to show smallness. That expression was "small as a mustard seed." This
expression was much like our expressions, "sharp as a tack," or "high as a
kite," or "flat as a pancake." Now these
expressions are not the most exact scientifically. We all know that there are things that
are sharper than tacks, higher than kites, or flatter than pancakes. But we use these
expressions in our conversations to graphically illustrate the point we are attempting to
make. This parable is a story about potential.
The recruiting slogan of United States Army
is “Be
All You Can Be!” I think that we
all want to be that. We want to be the best
that we can be, we want to be all that God created us to be. But sometimes we have been
beaten down, defeated, and discouraged to the point that we have all but given up.
“Bernard Shaw played the
“What If” game shortly before he died. “Mr. Shaw,” asked a reporter,
“if you could live your life over and be anybody you’ve know, or any person from
history, who would you be?”
“I
would choose,” replied Shaw “to be the man George Bernard Shaw could have been,
but never was.” [Source unknown- www.bible.org/illus/potential]
In verse thirty Jesus asked, “What is the
This morning I want to
share two principles and two applications from this parable.
Two Enduring
Principles
First, God Works
Through Small Things. (vv. 31-32)
In verse thirty-one Jesus says that
God’s working is like a “mustard seed which, when it is
sown on the ground, is smaller than all the seeds on earth; (32) 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."
The mustard seed, which produces
Jesus proverbially used the mustard seed on
another occasion when He said that if we had faith as a mustard seed we could move
mountains. But in the context of today’s parable the emphasis is not on our faith but
on how God works in establishing His purposes. God works through small things. He doesn’t
just work though small things but …
Secondly, God Works
Mightily Through Small Things.
There is a second characteristic of the
God
Works Mightily Through Small Things.
Two applications
Jesus wanted His disciples to recognize
that things are not always as they appear. What men see as insignificant, unimportant and
inconsequential, God would actually use to accomplish His purposes. He shared this with
His disciples so that they would not evaluate their own or others accomplish-ments or
abilities like those in the world who think bigger is better.
This was necessary because they would have
looked at themselves and been looked at by others as unsuccessful and unimportant in God’s
work. The disciples of Jesus were like that mustard seed, tiny and insignificant. But they
would shake the world.
Although Jesus didn’t give specific
applications to His disciples from His illustration
of the mustard seed, the application is rather obvious once you’ve understood the
spiritual principle being taught. This being the case, I want to briefly share with you
two responses I believe we should have to the truth of this parable!
First: Since God Works
Mightily Through Small Things We Should Not Be Disapproving.
What I mean is that we must be careful not
to evaluate the success or spirituality of a ministry, church or person based on size or
significance. We often evaluate and judge these things based on numbers, apparent
importance and influence, prominence, or seemingly notable and powerful things happening.
We tend to think that God must be in these things because they are bigger and more
significant and that God must not be in what is small and insignificant by man’s
standards. The lesson from the mustard seed has taught us otherwise.
Things are not always as they appear!
“A young English boy was
called "carrot-top" by other students, and given little chance of success by
some of his teachers. He ranked third-lowest in his class. The teacher’s report
reads, "The boy is certainly no scholar and has repeated his grade twice. He also has
a stubborn streak and is some-times rebellious in nature. He seems to have little or no
understanding of his schoolwork, except in a most mechanical way. At times, he seems
almost perverse in his ability to learn. He has not made the most of his
opportunities." What a sad picture. What chance for success would you have given this
young lad? Many in our day would simply write him off as just another delinquent. But
later, this young man settled down to more serious study. And soon the world began to hear
about Winston Churchill. [J. David Hoke. Tapping Your Potential.
Sermon on Mark 4:30-32 (www. Sermoncentral.com]
Satan would like
nothing better than for us to believe that our lives will never accomplish great things
for Jesus Christ.
Since
God Works Mightily Through Small Things We Should Not Be Disapproving and…
Second, Since God Works
Mightily Through Small Things We Should Not Get Discouraged.
The great prophet Elijah allowed
discouragement to get the better of him in
Elijah was discouraged and ready to quit
because from his point of view nothing of significance had come from his ministry. He was
looking for a mighty moving of God but he didn’t see it because he was only looking
for big things, such as many people due today.
So God gave Elijah a spiritual lesson. He
had Elijah go to a cave and then there was a powerful wind, but the “Lord was not in
the wind” and then there was a mighty earthquake but the “Lord was not in the
earthquake” and then there was a fire, but the “Lord was not in the fire.”
The Lord wasn’t in any of these big things, but then there was a “gentle whisper”,
a “still small voice” and Elijah went to the entrance of the cave because the
Lord was in this small, insignificant thing. God was telling Elijah “I
am working mightily but you haven’t seen it because you have only looked for me in
the big things.” Elijah judged his ministry wrongly because he judged it
based on size and significance. Do you see the message for the church today? If you hold
to the philosophy that bigger is better you will be looking for God in the extraordinary
and miss Him working mightily through the small things. You will also judge other
ministries on man’s criteria rather than God’s.
Christians often either abandon or give
Then God spoke through the prophet
Zechariah and said (Zechariah 4:6-7) “This is the word
of the LORD to Zerubbabel: "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, 'Says the
LORD of hosts. (7) "Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become
a plain! And he shall bring forth the capstone With shouts of "Grace, grace to
it!"
Sometimes we are like Zerubbabel and we need to be reminded that what God has begun he will bring to completion. Further into that passage God had a word for them and us about our attitude toward small things. In Zechariah 4:10 we read, “For who has despised the day of ??small things? ?” (NKJV)
In this passage the people are rebuked for
giving up because they didn’t think a small group could do anything significant and
because they saw the work of God as small. God in essence says, “Do not
despise the day of small things.” It may not look like much but God was
working so the people should be encouraged!
Satan would use our past failure to keep us
permanently discouraged. “I heard of an experiment done with
a Great Northern Pike. He was placed in a tank, and in that tank were placed minnows, his
favorite food. This pike snapped them up so fast you could hardly see his head move. He
thought he had died and gone to pike heaven. But then they placed a clear glass cylinder
in the tank, and into the cylinder they put more minnows. Of course, the pike went for
them, and he bumped his nose. He went again, and again bumped his nose. He tried again and
again and again, until he finally got it into his head that those minnows were beyond his
reach. So he just settled down to the bottom of the tank. Then they removed the cylinder
and the minnows began to swim free. But the pike didn’t try to get even one of them.
He had been programmed to believe something that was no longer true.
It was true at one
time, but it was no longer true. The sad fact was that he didn’t know it. The devil
would like nothing more than for us to believe his lie that we will never accomplish great
things for Jesus Christ.” [J.
David Hoke. Tapping Your Potential. Sermon on Mark 4:30-32 (www. Sermoncentral.com)
]
Two Principles
God Works
Through Small Things.
God Works
Mightily Through Small Things.
Two
Applications
Since
God Works Mightily Through Small Things We Should Not Be Judgmental.
Since God Works Mightily Through Small Things We Should Not Get Discouraged.