Scripture Reference: Mark 4:1-34

The Kingdom Keeps on Growing – Continued

From Last Lesson: All this sowing and planting and rooting and growing has been for a purpose, because there is a harvest to come from it.

So, what is the point of this parable? Actually Jesus has already given us a clue to that when he explained the parable of the sower. In verse 14 we read, “The sower [farmer] sows the word.” This parable is simply about that word, the message of Jesus, taking root and growing in someone’s heart. As someone like you or me receives the message, a new life begins and grows. There is a new start, a new birth, when someone comes to know Jesus. Then the person grows. The growth seems to happen mysteriously; you can’t control it. If you have watched a new Christian grow and develop, you recognize the picture. We can encourage it. We can surround a young Christian with all the help and support we can, just as a gardener will feed and water a growing plant, but we can’t make the growth happen. That is a miracle, and miracles are always God’s department. Then, maybe long afterwards, comes the harvest. Grain plants are there for a reason. They are in a farmer’s field, and the farmer is coming back. The parable is about us, and the Lord, who, like the farmer, is coming back. The only question is, what will He find when He does?

Let’s move on to the second of these parables about the kingdom, the mustard seed (see Mark 4:30-32). It’s as though Jesus muses to Himself: “How can I show these people what my Father’s kingdom is really like?” He chooses a somewhat different picture this time; instead of a field of grain, where each plant stands for a single individual, in this case the one mustard plant stands for the whole kingdom. A single tiny seed is sown in the ground. The point here is not about scientific accuracy, so let’s not stumble over it; seeds do exist which are smaller than mustard seed, but Jewish tradition regarded the mustard seed as proverbially tiny. However, from such a tiny seed, see what happens as it grows! In this area, mustard plants can grow up to ten feet high, it “becomes greater than all herbs and shoots out large branches,” as Jesus says, big enough “so that the birds of the air may nest” and hide in and shelter from the heat of the sun.

It’s a very short, simple parable. The basic point is the contrast between the tiny seed and the fully-grown shrub. Each of those birds that come to perch in the branches weighs thousands of times more than the original seed. This kingdom, whatever else it may be, is something that starts out tiny and ends up enormous, but it all takes time. That is the aspect that Jesus’ original hearers would not have appreciated.

The Jews of Israel in those days had very clear ideas about the kingdom of God, but their ideas were quite different from what Jesus is teaching here. If they had expected their Messiah to tell parables at all (which is unlikely), they would have expected Him to compare the kingdom to a hurricane which sweeps in suddenly and flattens everything in its path, or else to an invading army that sweeps through the land in no time at all, destroying all resistance and ending with the king enthroned. That is what they expected God to do! The Day of the Lord would come at once, and God’s enemies would immediately be subjugated.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
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