Rev. David Holwick N Parables of Jesus
First Baptist Church Mustard Seed & Leaven
Ledgewood, New Jersey
April 10, 2016
Matthew 13:31-33
LITTLE BITS
I. Small beginnings.
A. Why haven't you come up with one?
In October 2010, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger put a mobile
mobile phone app online.
It was free, and it allowed people to share photos with their
friends.
You could also share videos as long as they were shorter than
15 seconds.
They called the app "Instagram."
Many of you have never heard of it.
But in two years it had 100 million users.
In four years it had 300 million users.
A year and a half after Kevin and Mike made their app available,
a company named Facebook bought it - for $1 billion.
$1 billion for program that no user pays for...
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About a year after Instagram started, two college students, who
still lived at home with their father, designed a similar
mobile phone app.
It also allowed you to send photos to friends, but with a
twist - the photos self-destructed after being viewed.
This was very handy for career-conscious millennials.
The college students called it "Snapchat."
Within a year, people used it to share one billion photos and
videos at the rate of 20 million per day.
This year, people were sharing 7 billion videos PER DAY.
Currently the Snapchat company is estimated to be worth
$10-20 billion, depending on who does the valuation.
I don't think the college students still live with their dad.
[1]
In 1988 your pastor designed a free computer program.
A few years later he began to distribute on the internet,
still for free.
After 28 years, it is being downloaded around 3 times a day.
No one has offered him a dime for it - but there's always hope!
B. Sometimes small stuff can become big stuff.
1) It doesn't happen often, and most people miss it.
2) Jesus caught the most dynamic expansion in history.
II. Deceptively simple parables about small things.
A. Parables come in several different forms.
1) We are most familiar with the story parables like the
"Good Samaritan" or "The Rich Man and Lazarus."
2) Today's parables are much shorter.
a) They are known as similes, and they make a direct
comparison between a natural object and a
supernatural one.
b) Jesus must have thought they made great teaching aids
because he used them frequently.
c) They can also be tricky to interpret because they don't
contain a lot of data.
B. The Mustard Seed.
1) Is it really the smallest seed? 13:32
a) Even in the days of Jesus they knew about smaller seeds.
1> Orchids and even petunias are smaller.
b) Jews used the smallness of the mustard seed as a proverb.
1> You will notice that in Matthew 17:20 he also uses
the mustard seed to describe the possibilities
of faith.
2> Jesus is not giving a gardening lesson but making
a point.
3> When you think about it, it's amazing that ANY seed
can produce the large plant you end up with.
2) Calling it a tree is also somewhat of an exaggeration. 13:32
a) Mustard can grow into a bush 8 to 10 feet tall, but
a bird would have a tough time nesting in one.
b) This could be a clue that Jesus is going beyond nature
to describe something special.
C. The Leaven.
1) Not really yeast (NIV), but sourdough - lumps of old dough.
a) It works through the larger batch and transforms it.
2) Fantastic amount - it is about 60 pounds of flour.
a) That's enough bread for 100 people.
b) It recalls Abraham's hospitality when angels came to
visit him - he even added a cow to the menu. Gen 18:6
3) This is another fantastic element that shows that divine
realities are being described.
III. Researching what these parables teach.
A. They are simple but somewhat controversial.
1) Some believe Jesus is making a negative point.
a) Little things becoming something big, is bad.
2) The key is how you understand the images Jesus uses.
a) It is always a good idea to trace how the images are
used in the rest of the Bible.
B. Trees with birds are used in the Bible to portray pagan kingdoms.
1) Consider Daniel 4:10 --
"These are the visions I saw while lying in my bed:
I looked, and there before me stood a tree in the middle
of the land.
Its height was enormous.
The tree grew large and strong and its top touched the sky;
it was visible to the ends of the earth."
Going down to the middle of verse 12:
"Under it the beasts of the field found shelter, and the
birds of the air lived in its branches."
Daniel explains the meaning of the tree to pagan King
Nebuchadnezzar in verse 22:
"You, O king, are that tree! You have become great and
strong; your greatness has grown until it reaches the
sky, and your dominion extends to distant parts of
the earth."
2) Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom was Babylon, and the book of
Revelation says unclean and detestable birds nested
there. Rev 18:2
a) This is why some give it a negative interpretation.
b) A typical application is that the pure, small church
of the disciples will grow into a huge but corrupted
organization.
C. Leaven is even worse.
1) Jesus was always warning people to "beware of the yeast
of the Pharisees" (his religious opponents). Matt 16:6
2) In Matthew 16:12 he makes the bad connection explicit:
"Then they understood that he was not telling them to
guard against the yeast used in bread, but against
the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees."
3) Paul also uses yeast in a negative way, recalling how
Jews at Passover had to sweep away every trace of it.
a) Leaven is a consistent symbol for false teaching.
b) Perhaps Jesus is saying false teaching will invade
the church and ruin it - not at all hard to believe.
IV. I think the parables make a positive point.
A. The symbolism can be understood in different ways.
1) Birds in trees could signify good kingdoms as well as bad
ones, so perhaps Jesus is pointing to the Kingdom of God.
2) Yeast can point to evil, but it also describes a dramatic
transformation.
3) Both parables seem to have a positive tone.
B. If the point is positive, what is Jesus aiming at?
1) God's kingdom will grow extensively, and explosively. [2]
a) It starts small, almost invisible, but ends big.
b) In the parable of the leaven, it literally says the
woman "hid" the leaven in the dough.
1> It is like we are secret agents.
2) The ambiguous symbols also show the tension in the Kingdom.
a) Babylon became a massive tree, but the church is a
big bush.
b) We shouldn't get carried away with bigness or numbers
but with genuineness.
A remarkable story is unfolding in China.
We all know about that nation's explosive economic growth.
Something else is growing there too - Christianity.
Journalist David Aikman predicts one-third of China will be
Christian in 30 years.
Consider the city of Wenzhou.
It is now a global manufacturing hub -- and it has a
million-and-a-half Christians.
The Christians are prosperous and they are building big
churches.
Really big - one of them seats 3,000 people.
And each church puts a huge red cross on top.
The communist leaders are not thrilled with this.
They are ordering the crosses to be taken down and more than
1,200 have been.
They have bulldozed some new churches, saying they violated
zoning laws.
Christianity is very threatening to them.
What has been the response of the Christians?
Some have protested, some have petitioned the government.
Others have made hundreds of small wooden crosses, painted
them red, and put them in their homes and cars.
#64909
V. God can use small.
A. Jews expected a thundering, triumphant coming of Messiah.
1) It would be accompanied by Armageddon and clear signs.
2) They applied these expectations to Jesus. John 6:13-15
3) Many Christians today also yearn for an obvious display of
supernatural power.
B. Consider the small start of God's Kingdom.
1) Jesus had 12 pitiful disciples. Not very impressive.
2) Even today, genuine believers are few.
a) Jesus says you should expect this.
b) It is a narrow door that few go through. Matt 7:14
C. What matters is being among the saved. Luke 10:20
1) Are you CERTAIN you are going to heaven? 1 John 5:13
a) You can know. (assurance)
b) Does your life back it up?
2) Your faith may be small, but even tiny faith can move
mountains.
D. Remember that what God starts, he finishes.
1) With you.
2) With His Kingdom.
3) The final scene will be stupendous.
a) Multitudes from every nation and language will
worship Jesus.
b) I hope you will be among them.
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
[1] Material for this illustration came from Wikipedia articles on
Instagram and Snapchat, as well as statistics for my SID database.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram>, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapchat>.
[2] “Plants of the Bible: Mustard,” Henk P. Medema and Lytton John
Musselman, “The Parable of the Mustard Seed.” <https://ww2.odu.edu/~lmusselm/plant/bible/mustard.php>.
#64909 “China vs. The Cross,” John Stonestreet, BreakPoint Commentary,
August 12, 2015.
These and 35,000 others are part of the Kerux database that can be
downloaded, absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html
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