Word of Salvation – Vol. 37 No. 11 – March 1992

The Parable Of The Mustard Seed

Sermon by Rev. M. Flinn on Mark 4:30-34

Reading: Ezekiel 17; Mark 4:30-34

Congregation of the Lord Jesus,

We come to another of our Lord's parables on the subject of the kingdom of God as it is found in Mark's gospel.  But before we get into the details of this parable I want to begin by reviewing the significance of the fact that Jesus is teaching by this method.  The text itself calls attention to this fact in verses 33 and 34.  We read:

'And with many such parables He was speaking the word to them as they were able to hear it; and He did not speak to them without a parable; but He was explaining everything privately to His own disciples.'

Jesus is sowing the Word.  He is proclaiming the Word of God to the crowds but he is using parables to do it.  And the reason for this, as we considered it from an earlier stage in the chapter before us, was that the Jews in general had forfeited the right to the clear word of God.  They had despised, they rejected the clear message of repentance and faith that the Lord had brought.  They were attracted to Christ because he was performing great wonders but they were not particularly interested in taking his teachings that seriously.  So the Lord began to teach in a more obscure fashion.  This was the beginning of that period of judgement in which the clear message of the truth was withdrawn from those who did not want to receive it.  And yet, at no point did the Lord refuse to give the truth to those who desired it.  The passage tells us that Jesus was explaining everything privately to his disciples and you may recall that the category 'disciples' is not necessarily limited to the twelve at this stage.  There were others who wanted to know the essential truth which was hidden behind the words of the parables.

So too are we engaged in attempts to strip off the outer covering of the parables with a view to arriving at the truth which they conceal.  And we should not despair because we do not have Jesus here with us in the flesh to give us an infallible explanation of them.  In many respects this would be wonderful but the Lord does not deal with us in this way.  Not even his private explanations to his disciples are recorded in Scripture for us.  But the Lord knew precisely what he was doing when these parables were recorded in Scripture in this way.  And he has not left us on our own but has sent the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to bring to the remembrance of the church all the teachings of Jesus Christ.  We have the Holy Spirit with us today and what's more, we have the completed revelation of the Scriptures.  And these are all we need in order to understand these parables correctly.  So once again, let's not be frightened about these parables but let us approach them in faith and in a believing way.  And let us make sure that we are interested in the truth and that we want to follow and apply it.  Otherwise the Lord will have these parables remain parables to us.  Their truth will be obscure to us.

The beginning of the Kingdom.

Against that background, let's examine the parable of the mustard see.  Jesus says:

“How shall we picture the kingdom of God, or by what parable shall we present it?  It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the soil, though it is smaller than all the seeds that are upon the soil, yet when it is sown, grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and forms large branches; so that the birds of the air can nest under its shade."

A mustard seed is one of the smallest of seeds and it was commonly used in Jesus' day as a picture of something tiny and insignificant.  On another occasion the disciples come to Jesus and ask why they were not able to cast out a particular demon and Jesus says that is because of the smallness of their faith.  If they had faith the size of a mustard seed, they would be able to move mountains.  But in this parable Jesus contrasts the smallness of the mustard seed with the end result of the seed's germination and growth.  Initially the seed is insignificant in terms of size but it grows into a great tree larger than all the garden plants.  Clearly, then, Jesus is teaching that the kingdom of God starts small and is insignificant to begin with but in the end it becomes something great.

Old Testament background.

Now if we were to stop there, we would have discovered a wonderful truth which should be of great encouragement to every Christian.  But there is more to this parable for us to consider.  Jesus talks about the fact that the mustard tree forms large branches, so that the birds of the air can nest under its shade.  If you have a Bible which is presented in such a way that it draws your attention to such things, you may have noticed that Jesus is quoting from an Old Testament passage here, or at least, he is alluding to it.  And whenever Jesus, or any of the New Testament writers for that matter, quote from the Old Testament, it is always with good reason, especially when they are dealing with a Jewish audience.  If we want to understand what Jesus was conveying to his hearers when he made this statement, we simply must take into serious account the passage to which he alludes in this parable.

Turn again to Ezekiel 17.  This passage concerns a particular period in Israel's history.  It's all about the events which finally led up the Babylonian captivity which began in earnest in 586 BC.  Now at this time the Babylonians were in control.  Their empire was both extremely large, extending way beyond the city of Babylon itself, and it was powerful.  And at this time, if you were a relatively small state like Israel, you did not get on too well if you went to war against Babylon.  You were forced to capitulate and become a vassal kingdom or your key centres and rulers were destroyed and you were taken into exile.  But when the Babylonians conquered other realms, they did not immediately engage in wholesale destruction and exile.  That would have been both wasteful and expensive.  They were smarter than that.  They knew that it was far better to leave the inhabitants within a region and establish a puppet governor or ruler who would swear allegiance to them and pay tribute to them.  In this way, their procedure for conquest went in stages.

For our purposes, it is important to realize that Israel, or more accurately, Judah, went through the first of these stages in the 590s BC.  The Babylonians came in, took away her king and a few of the other key princes, and established a member of the royal family, Zedekiah as the puppet governor.  Zedekiah was forced to take an oath of allegiance and in return he was able to occupy the throne and rule over his own people.  But Zedekiah was not too happy with that arrangement.  He wanted to be free from the Babylonian yoke.  But he could not do this himself.  He needed assistance and so he turned to Egypt of all places.  He tried to establish a sneaky alliance with Egypt in order to escape from the power of Babylon.

With that information, we can appreciate the significance of this chapter.  Ezekiel is told to speak a parable to the house of Israel.  He speaks of a great eagle, with great wings, long pinions and a full plumage of many colours.  And later on, in verse 12 we learn that the eagle stands for the king of Babylon.  The eagle comes and plucks off the topmost twig of the cedar and takes it to a land of merchants.  The Babylonian ruler took the king of Judah off to Babylon.  But the eagle took some of the seed of the land and planted it beside abundant waters.  The king of Babylon established Zedekiah as the puppet governor.  The seed grew up and became a vine but there was another great eagle with great wings and the vine bent its roots towards the second eagle.  Zedekiah sought an alliance with Egypt.  What will be the outcome of all this?  Is this vine going to survive?  No, says God.  It will be pulled up by the roots.  It will wither and die.  The great eagle of the north will come down again and destroy Zedekiah and Jerusalem in the second stage of the conquest process.  Now let's turn again to the three verses at the end of the chapter beginning at verse 22:

Thus says the Lord God, 'I shall also take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and set it out; I shall pluck from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one, and I shall plant it on a high and lofty mountain.  On the high mountain of Israel I shall plant it, that it may bring forth boughs and bear fruit, and become a stately cedar.  And birds of every kind will nest under it; they will nest in the shade of its branches.  And all the trees of the field will know that I am the Lord; I bring down the high tree, exalt the low tree, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish.  I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will perform it.'

You see what God is saying?  He is informing the house of Israel that He too will take one of the topmost branches of the cedar and He will plant it and it will grow up and bring forth great branches and bear fruit.  And when it does, all kinds of birds will nest under it.  And all the trees will know that He is the Lord.  The Lord is promising nothing less than the re-establishment of the house of Israel.  What's more, the house of Israel will become so great that birds of every kind will come and settle under its shade and its protection.  Every bird, including the great eagles, the kings of Babylon and Egypt.  And every tree, every nation, is going to understand that God is the Lord.  So what we have here is a prophecy concerning the future greatness and the strength of the empire of God's kingdom and the promise that all nations of the world, are going to come under its influence.

The 'eagle' of Jesus' day.

But now let's transpose this imagery upon the situation in terms of which Jesus spoke the parable of the mustard seed.  What is the great 'tree' of Jesus day?  Is it not the tree of the Roman Empire under whose domination and control lies Israel and all the other nations of the known world?  Who is the great 'eagle' of Jesus day?  Is it not the Roman Emperor?  And yet Jesus, repeating this prophecy given to Ezekiel and re-applying it to his own day, says that the kingdom of God is going to become so great that all the birds will come and rest in its shade.  And all the plants of the garden are going to recognize and understand that God is the Lord.

Brothers and sisters, this does not mean that every person in this world is going to become a Christian prior to the Second Coming of our Lord.  There will always be the tares among the wheat.  But what it does mean is that the kingdom of God is going to become so great and influential in the world that all nations are going to be affected by it.  By comparison, it will dwarf empires as great and as extensive as Babylon, Egypt and Rome.  When Jesus gave his great commission to take the gospel to all the nations, he knew what he was doing.  When he trained his twelve disciples for positions of leadership, he knew what he was doing.  He was functioning in terms of God's great plan to establish his kingdom throughout all the world.

Practical lessons.

What does all this mean for us?  Well, there are two practical lessons that I would like to trace out from the parable of the mustard seed.  The first is this: Never despise the day of small beginnings.  When it comes to this matter of the establishment of the kingdom of God in the world, never despise the day when the kingdom seems to be the size of a mustard seed.  Jesus was born of a woman in a stable because there was not any room at the inn.  His parents had to flee with him for fear of the life of their child.  Throughout the course of Jesus' ministry on earth, you could not really say that he had many converts.  He had twelve disciples but he lost one of those.  He was betrayed by Judas.  He was arrested, falsely accused, mocked and crucified as the king of the Jews with his crown of thorns on his head.

And when Jesus spoke this parable he knew full well that it was going to happen this way.  Yet he also knew that on the third day he would rise from the dead.  He knew that he would send the Holy Spirit upon the disciples and that they would go out to preach in obedience to his commission.  He knew that in one day 3,000 souls would be saved, on another 5,000, as a result of the preaching of the gospel, far more than the regular number of his followers throughout the course of his ministry but still a drop in the ocean.  But he also knew that the apostle Paul would be sent out and that churches would be established in Ephesus and in Corinth, at Philippi and indeed throughout all the region of Europe and Asia Minor.  He knew that the apostle would proclaim the gospel freely in Rome itself and that eventually, in a few centuries, the whole of the Roman Empire would come under the influence of Christianity.  But Rome never did embrace every nation of the world.  Jesus knew full well that the kingdom would grow much larger still until that point at which every tree in the garden understood that God was the Lord.  That's why even before he had seen any fruit to speak of, he told the parable of the mustard seed.

If you are anything like me, you may well get discouraged sometimes when the kingdom of God in our own day and nation appears the size of a mustard seed.  It's discouraging when the church has in many respects so departed from the truth of Christ that there is very little difference any more between the church and the world and we are left wondering whether it is possible to make any sort of identification between the church and the kingdom of God.  It's discouraging when we look at the numbers of genuine believers in the face of the enormity of the task of preaching the gospel.  But if you think about it, these conditions match those of Jesus' day; only the situation in his day was far worse.  In less than a generation, those who called themselves 'the people of God', the Jews, were so apostate that they began killing the members of the true church of God.  And the Romans threw them to the lions or put tar over them and used them for human candles.  At least we live in a nation and at a time when Christians are not put to death for being Christians.  At least we have the freedom to worship God.  And that's progress.  To be sure, Jesus has not completed his work, but let us never despise the day of small beginnings.

In the second place, we must never be ashamed of our citizenship.  In Jesus' day, people were proud about the fact that they were Roman citizens.  If you were a Roman, you were somebody.  And if you were not born a Roman, you could obtain that citizenship for a certain sum of money.  If you could afford it, it was worth it.  There were all sorts of privileges which went along with being a Roman citizen.  But when you think about it, it was so pathetic.  People were so proud of an empire which within a short space of time would rot from the inside with its corruption and its immorality.  People were so proud of something that was doomed to destruction by God, the one who removes kings and establishes kings.  How pathetic and how false the pride and the hope and the trust.

But now we are members of a kingdom which is destined by God to become the greatest empire in the history of the whole human race.  And we have the greatest of privileges.  We not only have material security and well-being here on earth, we have our eternal well-being secured as well.  When we die, we will go to heaven and enjoy eternal happiness with the Lord.  There will be no more pain and suffering.  No more sin, no more dissatisfaction and strife.  And we have obtained these privileges and this citizenship not by means of a sum of money.  Neither have we earned it.  We have received it as a gracious gift from the king himself.  We deserve his wrath, but we have received his grace.  All we did was trust in Jesus Christ, believing that he fully paid the penalty for our sins.  All we did was worship and thank him.  And the Lord has made us citizens of this great kingdom.

How incongruous and how pathetic if we are ashamed of what we have received.  Do we not have reason to be proud of our King and of our citizenship?  Is this not something to tell people about with joy and with boldness?  Let me ask you, my friend, when was the last time you spoke to a non-Christian about your true citizenship?  When was the last time you identified with Christ and bore witness to your king?  When was the last time you prayed for a non-Christian to be converted and for opportunities for you to be instrumental towards that end?  Let me be honest.  I ask these questions of myself and I find myself coming up short of the mark.  But let us challenge each other with this question.  If we are not zealous and bold for the gospel, how will we grow as a church?  How will we see our own little branch of that great tree grow and bear fruit?

God forbid that we would not see and hear, and that the great Gardener would come and prune off that branch.  God grant that we shall be a fruitful part of God's great mustard tree.

AMEN