Scripture: Matthew 13:31-33
Video Link: https://youtu.be/kEpEo0T-vtg
Structure:
- Introduction
- Transformation
- Abundance
- Usefulness
- Conclusion
Introduction:
Good morning everyone.
In our fridge at home, we usually have three different kinds of mustard: mild mustard, which we use on hot dogs and sausages, whole grain mustard, which has a bit more of a kick to it, and Dijon mustard which is useful for making salad dressings.
Mustard is used all over the world as a condiment or a spice in cooking, from India to Europe, to the Middle East and the Americas, as well as Tawa.
Mustard requires just four ingredients to make: seeds from the mustard plant, vinegar, salt and water.
Today we continue our Testimony of Trees series by focusing on the mustard tree. Three of the four gospels record Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed. Our message today draws on Matthew’s version, which also includes Jesus’ parable of the yeast. From Matthew 13, verses 31-33 we read…
31 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” 33 He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty poundsof flour until it worked all through the dough.”
May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.
If you google images of heaven you tend to get pictures of blue sky and rays of light shining through the clouds. But this is not the image Jesus gives of heaven. The images Jesus uses for the kingdom of heaven are very down to earth. A common mustard seed and yeast for baking bread.
The kingdom of heaven is not so much a geographical location. It’s more a state of being in which God’s will is done perfectly. The kingdom of heaven (also known as the kingdom of God), is characterised by justice and mercy, truth and grace. It is a community of lasting peace, joy and love.
The parables of the mustard seed and the yeast are both telling us something about the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven (come to earth) is about transformation, abundance and usefulness. We begin with transformation…
Transformation:
Most of you will have heard of the story of the Ugly Duckling. A mother duck is sitting on her eggs and one of the eggs is larger than the rest and takes longer to hatch. Then, when it finally does hatch, out crawls a drab grey looking creature, not a beautiful yellow chick.
The ugly duckling looks and feels different to everyone else and because of this he is teased and taunted by the other ducks until finally he leaves home.
But the ugly duckling doesn’t fare much better out in the wide world, because all the other birds he meets also point out his flaws.
The ugly duckling manages to survive one catastrophe after another until eventually makes it through the winter. Then one spring day, when the lake has melted, some children start throwing bread for him to eat.
And as they do they say to each other, ‘look at that beautiful swan’. The ugly duckling thinks the children are talking about someone else and so he looks down. But as he does, he sees his reflection in the water. He can’t believe his eyes. He was never a duckling in the first place. He had always been a swan.
Now he is able to find his own kind and is welcomed by them
The story of the Ugly Duckling is a parable of transformation, from humble beginnings to a beautiful end. The kingdom of heaven (or the way of God) is like the ugly duckling: different, misunderstood, abused and rejected at first. But in the end God’s will proves perfect and pleasing.
How often do we resist or even despise the will of God, finding it too distasteful, too difficult, too embarrassing, too small or too inconvenient, only to learn in the fullness of time that God’s will was the best thing to have happened to us, better than we expected or imagined.
Although the kingdom of heaven starts out small (like a mustard seed) it finishes up the largest of all garden shrubs. Likewise, although only a small amount of yeast is used in baking, it permeates through a large amount of flour, transforming it into delicious, nourishing bread.
We note that the yeast permeates the flour from the inside. The kingdom of heaven is not a violent take over from the outside. The kingdom of heaven (like yeast) transforms the world, quietly, from the inside out.
Implied in these parables is an encouragement to persevere. It’s like Jesus is saying, I know the kingdom of heaven doesn’t look like much to start with, but don’t despise small beginnings. You will be surprised to see what comes of it. God’s kingdom (in its fullness) is worth remaining faithful for.
Jesus was the original ugly duckling.
Jesus was born of a virgin and people questioned his parentage.
Jesus came as a carpenter, when people were expecting a warrior king.
Jesus spoke the truth, and people threw him out of the synagogue.
Jesus cast out demons, and people accused him of being the devil.
Jesus ate with sinners, and people called him a glutton and a drunkard.
Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead, and people crucified him.
But that is not the end of the story, for Jesus embodies the kingdom of God in himself. Jesus is like the mustard seed and the yeast. Jesus’ coming has a transformational effect on the world.
After Jesus died, they laid him in a tomb and on the third day God raised Jesus from the dead, the first of many. If you confess with their mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
The parables of the mustard seed and the yeast show us that the kingdom of heaven, coming to earth, involves a process of transformation. Heaven’s humble beginnings on earth are a complete contrast to its glorious end.
So hang in there – persevere – for God’s kingdom is worth it in the end.
The parables of the mustard seed and the yeast show us the kingdom of heaven is about transformation and abundance.
Abundance:
In verse 32 of Matthew 13 Jesus says that though the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree…
Now in reading this we need to remember, Jesus is not giving a scientific lecture on seeds and plants. This is not a botany lesson. This is a kingdom of heaven lesson. It would be a mistake to test the truth of Jesus’ words using a scientific method. A parable is like poetry, it uses a certain amount of creative license to get the point across.
Jesus’ point is not that mustard seeds are the smallest seeds in all of creation. Mustard seeds are about 2-3 mm’s in diameter. Obviously there some seeds (or spores) which are smaller.
Nor is Jesus saying that mustard trees are the tallest of all trees. A mustard tree might grow between one and two metres tall, maybe more if conditions are right, but we are not talking the height of a kauri tree or an oak.
Nevertheless, in the context of a herb garden, mustard seeds are tiny in comparison to the size of a mustard tree. And that is the point. From one tiny seed comes an unbelievable transformation and abundance.
You don’t see a lot of mustard trees growing in New Zealand, but you do see quite a bit of gorse. Gorse is not like mustard in every way, but it is similar in some ways.
Gorse and mustard plants are around the same size and both come out in a bright yellow flower. What’s more they are both abundant. Gorse and mustard plants are so quick to self-seed and spread they are considered an invasive weed by some people.
As many of you will already know, gorse is not native to New Zealand.
Gorse was introduced to New Zealand a couple of hundred years ago from Scotland, I believe, where it is used as an ornamental hedge.
The settlers who introduced the gorse plant to New Zealand did not expect it to become so pervasive. The climate in New Zealand is warmer and so gorse plants grow more rapidly here and are harder to control.
Despite the millions spent on herbicides, slashing and burning, gorse is still found everywhere in New Zealand. In fact, gorse is so resilient that burning just makes it spread further
I imagine it must have come as quite a shock to Jesus’ first century listeners when he compared the kingdom of heaven to a mustard plant. They would have been expecting Jesus to say the kingdom of heaven is like a tall cedar of Lebanon, just as we might expect him say the kingdom of heaven is like a mighty Totara of Aotearoa.
Instead, Jesus uses a far more ordinary image, the image of a common shrub that was actually unwanted by many. It would have seemed strange to Jesus’ original audience when he said, a man took a mustard seed and planted it in his field. Why would anyone intentionally plant mustard seed in their field. That would be like a farmer intentionally sowing gorse seed.
But despite being unwanted at first, the kingdom of heaven is resilient.
Not only do we get such an abundance of it from a small seed, once the kingdom of heaven is sown it is practically impossible to get rid of.
The kingdom of heaven spreads everywhere like mustard plants in Palestine or like gorse in New Zealand.
The parable of the yeast also speaks to the abundance of the kingdom of heaven. In verse 33 of Matthew 13 Jesus says: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty poundsof flour until it worked all through the dough.”
60 pounds is an enormous amount of flour, more than you would normally bake for a family. It would make enough bread to feed a small village.
But that’s the point. Jesus is drawing a comparison between the small beginnings of the kingdom of heaven and the abundance it produces.
This idea of God’s abundance is often lost on us. We live in a society and culture which is more focused on scarcity and missing out. Our economy is driven by demand and supply which assumes there isn’t enough to go around, because sometimes (due to greed) there isn’t enough.
Not so in God’s country. The underlying assumption of the kingdom of heaven is abundance (due to generosity) with more than enough for everyone. Just imagine how different life will be when heaven is realised on earth in its fullness.
The parables of the mustard seed and the yeast show us the kingdom of heaven is about transformation, abundance and usefulness.
Usefulness:
When I was a teenager living at home, we used to grow mustard plants in the vege garden. Once the mustard plant got to a certain height (and before it went to seed) I would dig the foliage back into the soil. The green leaves acted as a fertiliser replenishing the soil’s nitrogen levels.
The mustard plant is useful for more than just fertiliser though. Indeed, the whole of the mustard plant is edible. The roots can be mashed up into a paste to be eaten. The leaves of a young mustard plant can be used in a salad and the seeds from the flowers are used to make the mustard you put on your ham.
In this way, the mustard plant is different from gorse. I wouldn’t advise trying to eat gorse, although goats have been known to feed on it.
Jesus finishes the parable of the mustard tree by saying: it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.
Birds do in fact find sanctuary in the branches of the mature mustard tree, but this is a parable and so the word, birds, has a double meaning. The prophets Daniel and Ezekiel used the image of birds perching in a tree as a metaphor for the gentile nations.
Many of Jesus’ Jewish audience, therefore, would have understood the birds of the air to be a poetic reference to non-Jews. Once again, Jesus’ parable probably grated with some of his listeners. The nation of Israel, at that time, was under the thumb of the Romans. Some of Jesus’ Jewish listeners would have preferred God to destroy the people of other nations, not create a sanctuary for them.
There is one other way in which the mustard plant is similar to the gorse bush. Just as a mustard plant provides sanctuary for birds, so too the gorse bush is useful in providing a nursery for New Zealand native trees. If you leave gorse undisturbed, native seedlings will grow up through it, protected by the gorse.
In much the same way that gorse is useful for regenerating native bush, so too the kingdom of heaven is useful for regenerating the souls of people of all nations.
We are talking about the usefulness of the kingdom of heaven. In thinking about Jesus’ parable of the yeast, the question of usefulness should be obvious. Bread feeds people.
More than that, fresh bread baked with yeast is usually more pleasant to eat than unleavened flat bread. The yeast of God’s kingdom makes all that it comes in contact with more palatable, more delightful.
Now in case you are thinking, ‘this is just poetry and clever story telling with little or no application to real life’, let me give you some examples of how the mustard seed and the yeast of the kingdom of heaven has made a significant impact on human history (as if the impact of Jesus himself is not obvious enough).
The first hospital was set up by a Christian woman called Fabiola of Rome. Fabiola lived during the fourth century, about 350 years after Jesus. Fabiola came from a wealthy noble family and was married off at a young age to a husband who proved to be abusive and probably unfaithful.
Fabiola found the courage to divorce her brute of a husband and start again. She had to really, for her own survival.
After the death of her second husband, Fabiola had a conversion experience. She used her wealth to build a hospital in Rome where she gave herself to caring for the poor and the sick, those rejected by society because of their illnesses.
You have to understand that there were no hospitals in ancient Rome. The poor would often die in the street.
Fabiola’s idea of a hospital caught on and spread around the world. Where would we be today without hospitals? Hospitals are like mustard trees in which the sick and injured find sanctuary. There are other examples too of the mustard seed of God’s heavenly kingdom taking root and having a positive effect in the world.
In his sermon last month, Murray Lucas highlighted Christians like Robert Boyle, John Dalton and Michael Faraday who rescued science from the blind superstition of the dark ages, giving us a more reliable scientific method which has enabled the advances in medicine we have today.
Closer to home, many of you will be familiar with the story of Ngakuku and his daughter Tarore. A mustard seed of heaven found its way into Ngakuku’s heart and mind, transforming his way of thinking and living.
Jesus taught us to pray: …forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us…
Ngakuku took Jesus’ words to heart. When Tarore was murdered, Ngakuku was determined to forgive those who killed his daughter. Ngakuku discouraged his people from seeking revenge and God honoured Ngakuku’s faith and obedience to Christ.
Tarore’s killer found a Māori translation of the gospel of Luke in Tarore’s pocket. When someone read the gospel to him, a mustard seed of heaven found its way into his heart and he sought forgiveness from Tarore’s father.
That is the kingdom of heaven at work in people’s lives and relationships.
Small seeds of love and truth growing and spreading to make a positive difference where it matters. What other mustard trees of heaven do you see in the world today?
Conclusion:
The mustard seed and the yeast of the kingdom of heaven are at work all around us, silently and right under our noses. The question is not, what can we do to make the world a better place? The question is: how might we join God in what he is doing in the world?
Let us pray…
Gracious God, open our eyes to the mustard trees and the bread of the kingdom of heaven all around us. Help us to sow the seeds of your love and truth wherever we are. Through Jesus we pray. Amen.
Questions for discussion or reflection:
- What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
- Do you have mustard at home (in the kitchen or in the garden)? What do you use it for?
- What are some of the characteristics of the mustard tree?
- What is the kingdom of heaven?
- In what ways is the mustard seed similar to the kingdom of heaven? In what ways is yeast similar to the kingdom of heaven?
- What mustard trees of God’s kingdom do you see growing in the world today? How might we join God in what he is doing in the world?
Tawa Baptist 