ARVE

After last time, in the parable of the seed, our Lord Jesus explained the principle found in the doctrine of grace named Sovereign Election. He explained that as a seed fell to the ground, it began to grow according to the response of the heart, and that it was God who drove the growth, not the sower of the seed. I stated that some accuse Calvinists of Gnosticism because of a dualistic tendency in some Calvinists, but as long as that can be studiously avoided, Calvinism need not be Gnostic in nature. God making all things happen is the furthest thing from the dualism we could be accused of. It is saying that all things happen according to God’s will, and that at the same time, no violence is ever done to the will of the creatures, and that although God is not the author of sin, He will allow it to happen as He uses the results of it for His own purposes. He does not tell us all of those purposes, and He is not under obligation to do so.

This parable continues the idea of the sovereign election of God’s will and purposes. Both parables are about God-driven growth, and in a direct comparative description about a tiny mustard seed, it also displays growth that no one can see, at least not at first. Mark here adds scale — the seed grows from the proverbial smallest of seeds to the greatest of shrubs. He adds other things as well, and I hope to discuss at least a few of those in context.

That said, I broke the text into the following thought units:

KV31: The Provocative and Controversial Kingdom of God

31: “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…”

30-31: To What Can We Compare God’s Kingdom?

32: Remember the Day of Small Things

33-34: Jesus Hides The Truth in Plain Sight

The thing I find most notable in the text this time is that the comparison our Lord uses to describe God’s kingdom, although sweeping, is an unexpected one. We will address some of this in the text, but according to Claiborne and Haw, in their book Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019), pp. 103–104, mustard held deeply negative cultural meaning at the time of Jesus. The plant was considered an aggressive invader species, and they note there were laws that forbade its planting in household gardens. Struckmeyer, in A Conspiracy of Love: Following Jesus in a Postmodern World (Eugene, Oregon: Resource Publications, 2016), tells us it was a symbol of chaos and disorder. In the Jewish mind of that day, it represented uncleanness and unholiness, with strict rabbinical regulation on what could be planted together to prevent outbreaks, one could reason. Jesus would have known all of that, suggesting that He was once again involved in a little provocation for shock value — waking the sleeping leadership up and getting their attention.

The leaders of Israel would have been expecting the analogy Ezekiel used in Ezekiel 17:22–23: “Thus says the Lord God, ‘I will also take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and set it out; I will pluck from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one and I will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the high mountain of Israel I will 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.’” Our text reflects this, and we will discuss it, because it seems to be the exact opposite of Ezekiel. With that said, let’s get on with the text.

KV31: The Provocative and Controversial Kingdom of God

31: “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…”

In Mark’s choice to preserve the mustard bush in this parable, as opposed to Ezekiel’s mighty cedar tree, we see the emergence of what I have termed “The Unexpected God.” He is marking Jesus’ parable as a diminished expectation set against the long-held dreams of Israel for the coming kingdom of God. In His analogy, He fundamentally diverges from what is expected toward something that will clearly evoke very different imagery, expectation, and commentary. The mighty cedar of Lebanon is replaced by a garden herb, and He identifies Himself through humility, lowliness, and meekness.

More than that, this subversion operates on multiple levels. It says as much by what it does not say as by what it actually says: the tiny mustard seed will not produce an oak or a cedar. Those looking for a coming savior with political and military power to establish a temporal kingdom would be sorely disappointed. Jesus came riding a donkey’s colt, not a warhorse (yet). This unexpected God resisted the triumphalism that Israel’s leaders all craved.

However, this diminished expectation covered up a real and radical transformation: the kingdom of God does not stand on power that serves itself, but rather on serving others, giving space for the birds of the air to shelter in its shade. Rather than hostility toward a Roman (or any other) enemy, we see hospitality to those who need it. It meets marauding enemies with nurturing love for those same enemies — nothing less than their integration into, and the restoration of, all creation. We will say more as we go through the text. Let’s get into it and see what it will tell us.

30-31: To What Can We Compare God’s Kingdom?

Something I noticed, and it may be an artifact of Mark’s own style of “immediately,” is that there seems to be no break here between parables. Jesus did not have to go searching for just the right illustration to show truth to those listening. I contrast myself here, or rather my own experience putting sermons together. I’ve done a fair bit of public speaking since high school, and I’m competent at it, but even I have to puzzle it out at times. Jesus shows no observable struggle to do this, and to me it displays His superior knowledge and ability. I don’t just admire it, I bow to Him because of it. Into the text we go.

30: And He said, “How shall we picture the kingdom of God, or by what parable shall we present it?”

At the risk of repeating myself, Jesus isn’t fighting to find an analogy here. He is simply speaking from what is in His heart. He already knows the answer He is going to give to His own rhetorical question. As I said earlier, I’m not unskilled in this myself — I do it almost daily, and some of you on the call tonight have seen me do it since my university days. I love it when it’s a subject I know well. But I don’t always know it well, and Jesus always did. I bow to Him for that.

Pay attention to what is actually being examined here. It is not the Word itself, nor the hearts who hear it, nor even the God who drives the growth, that is in view — it is the kingdom of God. The Lord Jesus is about to give a definitive illustration for the ages. Most of Israel’s leaders think they already know what is coming next. We already know they won’t be right — let’s look at that in detail in the next verse.

31: “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,”

Picture the scene. The leaders of Israel — the Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, and Herodians, and perhaps others — are all there, and the “Rabbi” is about to teach them what they expect: the tale they’ve known since childhood, of how God will take a sprig from the high top of the cedar tree (famous for its height — I recall seeing cedars of Lebanon compared to California redwoods, hundreds of feet tall) and plant it on the high and lofty mountain of Israel, where it will flourish and, they think, provide shelter for those who come to it from every nation. Those were NOT the words they heard. Record scratch, brakes squealing — what is He saying now?

He’s talking about a weed? Mustard?! That useless shrub? The one they had to pass laws about planting in home gardens? That symbol of chaos and darkness that invades the ordered land with its strong odor and leaves a bitter taste in the mouth? That plant that’s nearly impossible to control, that gets cut down and burned and still won’t go away? THAT one?

Yes — He is talking about the mustard seed. Almost certainly black mustard, Brassica nigra (also known by the older name Sinapis nigra), which grew wild all around the Sea of Galilee. In good soil it can reach a height of 6 to 10 feet within a single season, depending on agricultural conditions. Mark calls it λάχανον, a garden herb; Luke and Matthew call it a δένδρον, an actual tree. Rabbinic tradition in the Jerusalem Talmud (Peah 7:4) records a mustard plant large enough to climb like a fig tree. The seeds themselves are about 1 millimeter across, for reference.

What’s the significance, beyond the shock value to Israel’s unprepared leaders? If you love a good case of irony, as I do, consider that Ezekiel’s prophecy had long been read as describing a regal, imperial tree. Maybe that will be its final form — Ezekiel’s prophecy does say so, and most of his later prophecy seems to involve Christ’s millennial kingdom — but the kingdom of God, as it comes now, is a wild, spreading, uncontrollable, invasive growth that is impossible to stop. No wonder Luke and Matthew pair this with the parable of the leaven, which, put into a lump of dough, spreads through and seasons the whole loaf over time. The mustard seed shows outward growth, while the leaven shows inward growth — but we’ll talk about the leaven when we get there.

That is the illustration our Lord Jesus uses to explain the kingdom of God. In Christian terms, it’s a perfect analogy. Because the kingdom advances on earth today through service to others, and grace spreads as we are faithful in evangelism, it takes on the character of uneven — some might say chaotic — growth. It is wild, it spreads on its own, and no control measure can stop it.

The Lord Jesus is about to describe the final form that growth will ultimately take, in our next thought unit.

32: Remember the Day of Small Things

In this section I noticed something related to the growth of this shrub: every plant starts from a small seed, about a millimeter across, as we saw above. There’s something about this that tugs at my heart, quite deeply. Let’s look at the verse and I’ll try to explain.

32: “yet when it is sown, it 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.”

Let’s deal first with what’s in the parable itself. Before anything else, the seed is sown. It’s the seed of the kingdom of God, so this is a clear gospel reference — the spread of the gospel over all the earth is what’s being described here.

Remember, Jesus’ choice of the mustard seed flies in the face of what the naysayers in the crowd expected. They would have seen this as a complete subversion of their hope for a political solution to their nation’s troubles. Some hoped for a warrior-messiah who would lead them to victory over Rome and its puppet kings — in this case, Herod Antipas. Others wanted to work with the Romans, though that was publicly unpopular; they wanted a leader who would simply stop the tax collection. But the chief objection, for most, was the mere fact of Roman rule over Israel. As one commentator puts it, “A special grievance was the system of taxation under which the already high official taxes were swollen by the unofficial rake-off of the tax-collectors… who thus became a feared and hated group, both as extortioners and as collaborators with the occupying power. But the chief cause of resentment was the mere fact of political subjection, a position felt by many to be incompatible with Israel’s status as the people of God” (R. T. France, “Jesus Christ, Life and Teaching Of,” in New Bible Dictionary, ed. D. R. W. Wood et al. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 565). They even tried to force Jesus into that role: “So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone” (John 6:15).

Jesus isn’t eliminating Israel’s long-awaited kingdom. He’s saying it isn’t what they expect — that it will begin in a small way and grow in unexpected, hidden ways, ultimately becoming the kingdom that shelters all who come to it. That’s pictured by the “birds of the air” that nest in its shade. But it starts from a seed that most people never notice falling into the ground. There was a day when Israel returned to the land after the Babylonian captivity, tasked with rebuilding a city the Babylonians had torn down to individual stones and burned. The task must have seemed overwhelming. God spoke to them through the prophet Zechariah: “For who has despised the day of small things? But these seven will be glad when they see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel — these are the eyes of the LORD which range to and fro throughout the earth” (Zechariah 4:10).

Some of you on the call tonight know this feeling well. Sometimes we pour ourselves into the work the Lord gives us and see little to no return — or worse, we face attacks from people we thought would stand with us. Zerubbabel, Joshua, Nehemiah, and Ezra all knew this; Zechariah likely did too. And yet our Lord is their Lord, and He encourages us the same way: don’t despise where you are now. True works of the kingdom of God follow the pattern of the mustard seed. From a small beginning, a mighty work results — though it may take a while. Noah worked faithfully on the ark for 120 years, miles from any body of water, before the rain fell (Genesis 6:14). Moses spent 40 years in Midian before he was called to service, then another 40 years in the wilderness after the people rejected God’s promise at the border of the land.

We tend to think we should get what we want, and what benefits us, right away — call it the get-rich-quick mentality. But would we truly benefit, in terms of the people God wants us to become, if He simply gave us everything we wanted the moment we wanted it? Even the Lord Jesus learned obedience through what He suffered during His time among us. His apostle to the Gentiles told Pastor Timothy, in his final letter, “Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3).

Sometimes it feels like it’s taking forever. I don’t say any of this to lay a guilt trip on you — I’m using it to illustrate the principle. Our Rumble channel has about 1,100 followers, and our website has been online since 2013. In those thirteen years, I’ve made very little revenue from book sales, which went straight back into the ministry. Add to that the time it takes to write a Bible study like this one, using the inductive method I believe in: the research and writing easily runs sixteen to twenty-four hours, which is two or three working days, and often I have a sermon in progress for another church at the same time. I have a family of five that needs my attention, and my wife and I just celebrated our twenty-sixth wedding anniversary. I attend church on Sundays, wherever I happen to be preaching that week — at least I’m always sure of the pastor and the sermon! Then there are questions from members that take real time to research properly, continuing-education requirements for pastors in our denomination, and volunteer work for our denominational associations. Most people in the pew never see any of this, and that’s exactly how it should be. No one should be surprised when we ask for five dollars a month, and not everyone cheers you on for asking. Three men — Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem — publicly attacked Nehemiah while he was rebuilding the city wall; Tobiah sneered that the wall would collapse if a fox jumped on it (Nehemiah 4:3). I was once taken to task at a church council meeting for monetizing my own content. My answer then is the same as my answer now, in the words of the apostle Paul: “For it is written in the Law of Moses, ‘You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing.’ God is not concerned about oxen, is He?” (1 Corinthians 9:9). Oxen were never really Paul’s point — he’s arguing that those doing the work should be able to meet their own needs while doing it. A few verses later he adds, “So also the Lord directed those who proclaim the gospel to get their living from the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:14). Paul waived that right for the Corinthians’ sake, but it remained a God-given right all the same. A five-dollar ask isn’t an offense. All of this is simply part of that small beginning. Do you think Noah didn’t face mockery for building a boat nowhere near water? Do you think Moses didn’t face it from Korah and his company (Numbers 16)? I’ve lived my own version of this. In 2013, God told me to start BereanNation.com, and I did — and I’ve had my share of naysayers, some of whom I thought I could have counted on. My point is this: if you are faithful, God will reward you, but not always tangibly, and not always immediately. I’m starting to see that now, years later, in congregations asking if I could be their pastor. I’m paid, most of the time, for the pulpit supply I provide; I also have a standing commitment to preach once every three months at my own church as a lay pastor, unpaid, simply sharing the gift God has given me.

And God always supplies enough to meet the need, though I’ll admit I had to teach myself to stop chewing my fingernails over it. My wife could tell you stories too. I remember when our kids were small, and money, diapers, and formula had all run out between paychecks at the same time. My wife and I were sitting at the dining room table, genuinely scared, when the mail came through the slot. More bills, we thought. There wasn’t a bill in sight that day — just envelopes postmarked from my wife’s family in North Carolina. Inside was enough for formula, diapers, and groceries so we could eat too. None of the cards were signed. We thanked God.

Think about that. How powerful is God, that He can work through the mail systems of two countries, the hearts of people a thousand miles away, and the exact timing of our need? I stand with Rich Mullins: our God is an awesome God. Zechariah 4:10 states the principle: “For who has despised the day of small things?” — and maybe some of us laboring under similar circumstances today will be glad when we see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel, because these are the eyes of the Lord, which range to and fro throughout the earth.

The parable, spoken by our Lord in its original form, is explained to us by the Holy Spirit whom He sent to indwell us — and He continues to show us the same principle through real, present-day examples. How can we not follow such an awesome God, who called us in love before the foundation of the world? And yet we’ll see why He spoke in parables at all in our next thought unit.

33-34: Jesus Hides The Truth in Plain Sight

I want to return for a moment to something I said during our study of Mark 4:1-20, specifically verses 10-12, where we looked at the purpose of all of Jesus’ parables. (If you missed that study, the notes are on BereanNation.com.)

Essentially, Jesus used the parable as a kind of “encounter vehicle” (Köstenberger & Patterson, 2011) — something that let His hearers remain outwardly neutral about what was said, while still seizing their attention and drawing them to interact with the truths He was introducing about the kingdom of God. Having heard it and thought it over, they would then respond, positively or negatively, in a moral sense.

For His followers, that encounter sorts people into the category of “those who hear the truth.” In Mark 4:25, Jesus says, “For whoever has, to him more shall be given; and whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.” For those who follow Him, this is a promise that all the mysteries Christ wants us to know will be revealed. The Greek phrase is τὸ μυστήριον δέδοται, “the mystery has been given.” Remember that Jesus Himself is the secret that has been given — not merely some hidden body of teaching. For His people, He is the gift given by God as their Savior, and that is the mystery. After His death and ascension into heaven, He sent His Holy Spirit to indwell us, and the Spirit guides us into all truth: “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come” (John 16:13). Before I give it all away, let’s get into the text.

33: “With many such parables He was speaking the word to them, so far as they were able to hear it;”

Because of what I just said, only those who truly believe — who have the Holy Spirit indwelling them — will understand the secret of Jesus as their Savior, and everything else will be understood in that light. Christ crucified and risen is the central doctrine of Christianity; where it isn’t, you’re not dealing with Christians. End of discussion.

If that’s true, then this is too: those who don’t have the Holy Spirit living in them, because they haven’t repented and turned to Christ, will never understand that Christ is the very gift they’re desperately searching for — unless they turn to Him. We hope and pray that they do. There is something of a time limit on it, though. We all die, and none of us normally knows when. A person can run out of time. The late Eagles member Glenn Frey is reported to have said, before his death in January 2016, “People don’t run out of dreams — people run out of time.” I’m still an Eagles fan, and I find a tragic irony in that statement. Glenn Frey ran out of time. We are all running out of time, sixty seconds at a time. Turn to Christ in repentance and faith before you run out of time.

We also see the mercy of God here, in the compassion of the Lord Jesus. He spoke the word to them “so far as they were able to hear it.” The Lord always knows exactly who He is talking to. For the proud and the powerful, He had very hard words. For the woman caught in adultery in John 8, He had compassionate truth — and the only person in that crowd with the actual right and authority to throw a stone was Jesus Himself. He didn’t. He showed mercy instead, like a driver pulled over for speeding who gets off with a warning. I’ll save a full look at that passage for when we get to John 8. For now, it’s enough to recognize the kingdom of God arriving in Jesus as the mystery, and the gift of His own life resulting in salvation for all who believe — and to move on to our last verse for this evening.

34: “and He did not speak to them without a parable; but He was explaining everything privately to His own disciples.”

As we saw in the last verse, Jesus has mercy on humanity. To those who need to know the truth and will receive it, He has given us His Holy Spirit to live inside us and guide us continually. For those who will not turn to Him, He has, in a sense, spared them the fuller weight of knowing the truth and not living it, since they never understood it to begin with.

The one possible exception here is the gospel itself, because we are all commanded to repent and turn to Christ as both Savior and Lord: “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent…” (Acts 17:30). The choice with the gospel is clear: repent, or don’t. There are consequences either way. Acceptance brings the rewards of eternal life in Christ. Rejecting His gospel means He will, in turn, reject the one who rejects Him: “But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 10:33) — the words of Jesus Himself. Rejection carries its own set of consequences. I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but it’s hard to describe the eternal rejection of the lake of fire without some vivid language. Revelation 20:10 says, “And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” Contrary to popular belief, the devil doesn’t rule hell — Jesus tells us in Matthew 25:41, “Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels…’” This is a place of torment for humanity’s own cosmic treason against a holy God. “Brimstone” is the biblical word for what we’d call sulfur — the Merck Index lists its boiling point at about 830°F (444.6°C). Revelation 20:15 says, “And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” The word “thrown” there is the Greek ἐβλήθη, “to be cast.” If your name isn’t found in the Lamb’s Book of Life, you will be cast into boiling sulfur — over 830 degrees. Let that sink in. That is the price of rejecting Jesus as Savior and Lord, even if you don’t want to take the picture literally. Why suffer that needlessly? Christ is waiting right now for you to turn to Him and ask forgiveness for every sin and every violation of His holy standard that you’ve accumulated. All you have to do is ask for that forgiveness, and believe that He paid the price for all of your sins — and ask because it’s the right thing to do, not merely because you got caught. As Paul wrote, “For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death” (2 Corinthians 7:10).

Don’t delay your repentance, either — don’t run out of time, as Glenn Frey reportedly put it. In the parable of the rich fool, who wanted to take it easy, Jesus said, “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’” (Luke 12:20). In other words: what good does it do to wait until you die, because by then it’s too late. Hebrews 9:27 tells us, “And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment…” Don’t be like a man I once knew well, who took the attitude of “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.” That sounds like a recipe for boiling sulfur.

Even so, Jesus took the time to explain everything to His disciples privately. In the time before the Holy Spirit indwelt believers, Jesus did that explaining Himself. Who doesn’t want the answers ahead of the test? I know I would have — though I never got them.

In the long run, our Lord Jesus always takes care of us — whether through His personal explanations to His disciples, the challenges I’ve faced in service to Him, or the desperation my wife and I felt the day before the mail came. It is well said with Peter: “…then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment…” (2 Peter 2:9). May we be those who rely on His mercy as we go forward in our walk with Him — or maybe we’re finding His mercy for the first time tonight. If that’s what’s happening, go with it. God really does love you, and He wants you to spend eternity with Him.

And that’s what I saw in the text tonight!

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