The Unstoppable Kingdom
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Kingdom Come, that’s our series. We’re in part 3. We’re preaching through the parables that Jesus taught in Matthew chapter 13. And today we’re gonna be looking at 2 parables that really function in a very similar fashion. We’ve named this series based on the Lord’s Prayer, the Lord’s teaching prayer that He taught in Matthew chapter 6.
And we all know this prayer, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Taught His disciples, He teaches us to pray kingdom come prayers, to pray for the kingdom to come. And every time we pray kingdom come prayers, we’re praying for the rule and reign of God to come to this world and to come into us personally. We’re not praying my kingdom come, we’re praying Thy kingdom come prayers for Jesus’ kingdom to come in us.
But the way Jesus talks about the kingdom creates a surprising tension for those that hear these parables and hear Him talk about the kingdom, ’cause He says, the kingdom is at hand, the kingdom is near, pray that the kingdom would come, pray kingdom come prayers, the kingdom is already in the midst of you, He says, He says, the kingdom is about to come upon you, and so He teaches this already/not yet of the kingdom, that it’s here, it’s present, it’s coming, And so the kingdom was near, it’s present, it’s coming, all of this describes the reality of the kingdom, but it also shows that it comes in a surprising way. It’s really a great surprise. In fact, I almost named this sermon instead of An Unstoppable Kingdom, A Surprising Kingdom, because these 2 parables describe why it came in such a surprising fashion. But more than that, it teaches that it’s unstoppable, so I finally landed there, but it could have been Surprising. It’s surprising because many people expected something spectacular, something immediate.
They expected to see castles and thrones and armies, and instead they hear a parable about a tiny mustard seed, that the kingdom would come like a mustard seed. They expected something obvious, something public. Instead, Jesus describes something that works quietly and obscurely like leaven in a lump of dough. They expected the kingdom to arrive with overwhelming power all at once, and Jesus revealed that the kingdom would begin small, work unseen, and advance gradually, and yet it would ultimately extend its influence to the whole world. Its beginning would not reveal its greatness at the ending.
And so that’s the surprising nature, and that creates a challenge for us because we’re tempted to judge the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of Christ, by its present state, the way it seems to appear to us now. We tend to entrust what’s big, visible, powerful, measurable. So when the church seems small compared to the powers of this world, when the culture seems increasingly resistant to the gospel of Jesus, when the work of God appears to be slow and hidden, we can begin to wonder, is His kingdom really advancing? Is His kingdom coming? But Jesus warned us not to worry about small beginnings and small influence.
The kingdom may begin like a mustard seed and work like leaven, but it is an unstoppable kingdom through His Son Jesus. In Matthew 13:31-35, Jesus taught 2 parables. And it revealed the surprising manner in which the kingdom of heaven enters and advances in the world. And I believe that we can trust that the kingdom of Christ is coming and it is unstoppable. And as we look at the text today, I think we’ll see 3 reasons why it’s an unstoppable kingdom.
So let’s dig in, Matthew chapter 13, starting at verse 31. He put another parable before them saying, the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown, it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. He told them another parable. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in 3 measures of flour till it was all leavened All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables.
Indeed, He said nothing to them without a parable. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, I will open My mouth in parables. I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world. This is God’s Word. We’re looking for 3 reasons, amen, we’re looking for 3 reasons we can trust that Christ’s kingdom is unstoppable Here’s the first reason, because its small beginnings cannot limit its ultimate growth.
Its small beginnings cannot limit its ultimate growth. Jesus compared the kingdom to a mustard seed, a proverbial way of describing tiny things in His day. The mustard seed is the smallest seed of all the plants that you plant in the garden. And then it’s a, a simile here He gives because it says, the kingdom of heaven is like. He doesn’t say the kingdom of heaven is a mustard seed, He says it’s like.
You remember your studies in high school of literature, like and as, those are both keys to show you that we’re dealing with a simile. This is a metaphor for the kingdom. The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. And so He’s comparing its smallness. See, this is a surprise to the people of Israel.
There were really 2 threads of Messianic prophecy in the Old Testament. One was of a conquering King, and that’s what they were looking for. But the other thread that they seemed to miss was of a suffering Servant. And so we see that line of prophecy in places like Psalm 22 where it begins in verse 1, My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Which Jesus says on the cross.
Saying the very words that David wrote down. And it has a line in Isaiah 53 that speaks of the suffering servant. And so they seem to overlook that line of Messianic prophecies, but here He’s saying it’ll be like a tiny thing, and they thought it would come big, but it comes tiny. But He says, watch this though, it doesn’t stay tiny. He says, it’s like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field.
What’s the field? That’s the world of humanity, that’s the world that this gospel seed, that this kingdom comes through the King Jesus and it will grow into the largest plant in the garden. Now, this is not the mustard plant that we see in the United States that grows to a bush, this is a larger version of it that we see in the Middle East East that grows to 20 feet tall and even larger. So this tiniest seed grows to this tree. And so this is a small to great metaphor.
Indeed, in the Greek we have smallest, which is mikros in the Greek, and, and when it has grown larger, which is megas in the Greek. So it grows from mikros to megas, from micro to mega. And so He’s getting their attention and they all know this because this is an agricultural people and they’re like, oh yeah, we know. He goes, that’s what the kingdom of heaven is like. It comes really small, you can barely see it, but it grows into a tree.
In fact, it grows so big that birds will build nests in its branches, showing the size of it. Now, there are at least 3 ways as you study the way theologians have looked at the birds that are making the nests in the branches. Some just look at the previous sower of the seed, of the sower parable of the 4 soils, and in that parable, the birds that came along and ate the seed represented evil, represented the evil one. And so they go, oh, this is probably saying that the kingdom will also have evil in it. It’ll have a mixture.
And they kind of view it, the birds, because of what they saw there. There’s another group that just looks at it and says, it’s just showing how big the tree is. The tree gets so big that it can support birds in their nest, and just from a little tiny seed to how big it is. I kind of fall into the third camp, which I’ll mention now, and it’s influenced by passages like this that you find in Ezekiel. All the birds of the heavens made their nests in its boughs, under its branches all the beasts of the field gave birth to their young, and under its shadow lived all great nations.
I kind of lean towards the idea that these birds and their nests, and nests are abodes, like little places of dwelling. I think it’s a positive picture. I kind of land in that camp that it’s the nations of the world, that it’s the Gentile nations, that it started small in Israel and it grew out until it moved out into the nations so that Jesus gives us the Great Commission, go therefore and make disciples of all nations. And the Greek word is ethnos, go and make disciples of all ethnos, of all ethnic groups. And so, you know, Jesus doesn’t tell us that part.
He doesn’t tell us the meaning of the birds, but that’s where I lean. I lean towards that idea that it’s a picture of how the kingdom of God will grow out and begin to affect all the nations of the world. Here’s what I’m seeing here in this though. Why is He telling this parable to this people? It’s because the, The kingdom is coming in a way they are surprised by.
It’s coming little. Do you feel little today? Do you feel small? Do you feel like you’re not all that? Guess what?
God can use you. Do you feel big? Do you feel powerful? You feel like, yeah, I’m all that and a bag of chips.
Well, God’s got another plan for you. He’s gonna have to make you small before He can use you, ’cause God loves to use small things and little people because then He gets the glory. This is what He says to Zechariah. Zechariah was born in the line of David. He would’ve been king, but because Jerusalem had been overthrown, Israel had been overthrown by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and they’d carried the people into exile, destroyed the temple, they had torn down the walls.
Zechariah is part of that group that returns to Israel after 70 years of exile, not as a king, but as a governor under Cyrus, the king of Persia that had overthrown King Nebuchadnezzar. And he returns and they immediately start laying the foundation for the temple, but then there’s a lot of trouble, there’s a lot of distraction, and the temple foundation just sat there for years and they didn’t do anything else on it. And so Zechariah, he’s discouraged, the people are discouraged. In fact, some of the older people that remember Solomon’s Temple, they were just weeping thinking it’ll never be as good, it’ll never be as great as Solomon’s Temple, and they were feeling really small, especially Zechariah, he really needed encouragement. And so God says this to Zechariah, or to Zerubbabel rather, through the prophet Zechariah.
He says, do not despise these small beginnings, For the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand. And so God spoke through the prophet Zechariah to tell the governor Zerubbabel, don’t despise the day of small beginnings. Don’t look at this, what’s so little, it’s so insignificant, because God rejoices in this day to see you holding the plumb line, which is, which is an instrument of making sure everything is squared. It’s an instrument of a building program. This, this verse has always meant a lot to me ever since 2002.
In 2002, it was only a few months, February of 2002, I was feeling so discouraged about our church. It was 10 years old. We just experienced our 10-year anniversary, and we were going through a tough season, a tough season financially My mother had died only a few months before that. She died in 2001. She was only 66 years old.
9/11 had happened that year so that there was a kind of a discouragement in our people, in the nation. There was an economic kind of discouragement and we were discouraged in the church. We were still portable after 10 years.
I just felt little. I wanted to quit. Part of it was I was grieving, part of it was how small we were after 10 years of labor, and I just felt like such a loser, like maybe I’m not cut out for this. Please, Lord, let me quit. I went away for 3 days with a case of bottled water, a legal pad and a pen, and my Bible, and I said, God, I’m gonna fast ’til you speak to me.
I need you, I wanna quit, I wanna go back to the hills. I’m not from the flatlands down here. You shipped me down here, I wanna go home. Have you ever been there? You ever been where you wanna quit?
You wanna go back, you wanna go back to Egypt? The wilderness is hard. I wanted to give up. And I felt the Holy Spirit lead me, I was reading through the Bible, I felt him lead me to Zechariah and I’d read the first 3 chapters and I was like, are you sure you told me? Maybe I told myself I was supposed to be reading Zechariah, but then I got to chapter 4 and I felt the Spirit just like, I was like, this really speaks to me, as we got to the passage where it says, not by power, but by might, says the Lord.
Not by power nor by might, but by my Spirit, says the Lord. And I was like, I started feeling like the Holy Spirit really, I felt myself like tears coming to my eyes. He says, Zerubbabel, you laid the foundation, you’ll set the capstone.
And he says, don’t despise the day of small beginnings. And I just felt like, Lord, are you telling— are you allowing me to hear what you said Zerubbabel to hear it afresh? It had a meaning for Zerubbabel. It had a meaning for me. God’s Word has an ongoing meaning for us, friends.
It— there you can find— you can enter the story at places and ask God to speak to you. And I just really felt Like I had to go home. I had to go home to Wilson and go back to work. Like it was really clear to me, don’t give up, don’t despise the day of small beginnings. There was a season during the exile where there was a young man named Daniel that began to work for King Nebuchadnezzar.
He was gifted with the ability to interpret dreams, and Nebuchadnezzar had a dream, and he dreamed of this, image of a great king that had a golden head and like bronze body and like legs of iron and then feet of iron mixed with clay. And then he saw a stone that turned into a mountain and broke the whole thing down. And it was more complicated than that, but I don’t have time to go into all that Daniel talked about in Daniel chapter 2. But here’s the key verse I want you to take note of. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.
That was a prophetic word that God spoke through a Gentile king named Nebuchadnezzar and was interpreted by the Jewish prophet Daniel. That was a prophecy of the kingdom of heaven and of the coming King, that it would come little, but it would turn into a mountain. That would overthrow all the kingdoms of the world.
And that’s what Jesus is telling them in this parable, but it’s going over most of their heads. He says it’s gonna come and it’s already come right now because the King has come, King Jesus, but it’s coming like a mustard seed, but it’s gonna grow into the biggest tree in the garden.
Be careful not to despise what looks small when Christ is at work. Be careful not to feel that I can’t attempt this because God, He loves to use little things and little people to accomplish great things. It starts, don’t despise the day of small beginnings. We can become discouraged when a gospel conversation seems to accomplish little. We can give up praying for that one that we’ve been praying for because we don’t see any change.
But God’s at work and his kingdom is growing and it’s unstoppable. Small beginnings are no obstacle to a sovereign God. This is the first reason that he gives these parables, the first reason we can see that his kingdom is unstoppable. Here’s the second. Because its hidden working cannot prevent its rising influence.
Its hidden working cannot prevent its rising influence. Jesus will shift now from the field to the kitchen. I think He must have seen some women in the crowd. And He said, let me put a woman in this parable. Let me go to the kitchen where the women are making bread.
And He says, the kingdom of heaven is like Here we have another simile. It’s like leaven. What is leaven? It’s yeast. It could be baking powder.
It’s a substance that causes dough, flour mixed with water, to rise. And people who make bread know this. It only takes a little to leaven the whole lump. It only takes a little, just a little bit, to leaven the whole lump. He’s using something, and he puts a woman in this parable just for the ladies.
He doesn’t want them to feel left out in the crowd. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid. Unusual choice of words, hid. We’ll see later why I think He chose this. It’s appropriate, but it’s somewhat a metaphoric word to use in the making of bread.
You would normally say, well, they sprinkled it in and then they folded it in, or they kneaded it in, but He used the word hid. We’ll see in a little while why, because He brings that word back But in a way it is hidden because it only takes a little and you don’t just sprinkle it on top where it’s visible and you just let it lay there. No, you fold it in, you knead it in until it disappears. And the idea of hidden here is not something like the lady was being sneaky, I’m gonna slip this in here, nobody’s gonna see this, but it’s the idea, no, that’s how you do it. That’s how you make bread.
And so the ladies would be like, oh, I like the word hid. I wonder why you used that. But that’s exactly true. You can’t see it. Once you’ve worked it in, you can’t see it.
And then you set it aside and it begins to rise. It goes to work even though it’s invisible in its activity. He said the kingdom of heaven is like that. And then He’s very particular about the measures of the flour. Many have really worked hard on this.
Hid in three measures of flour. The word measures seems to come from the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew seah. Three seahs of flour, and three seahs makes a ephah. Well, now we all know how much this is, right? Well, you have to know what a seah and an ephah is, and an ephah is close to fifty pounds.
Now the ladies are waking up. I’m hearing some of the ladies that make bread. I know my sister over here makes bread. She’s given me some loaves from time to time. She’s a great bread maker, baker.
I think that’s what you call a bread maker is a baker. It came to me finally. And so this idea of this little bit of yeast to 3 seahs, 3 measures of flour, the ladies in the crowd would’ve went, whoa, that’d feed over 100 people. I’ve never made that much bread. That would’ve— that’s the thing about parables that we’ve talked about, that there’s always something about the parable that’s very recognizable, but at the same time, a little off.
Like nobody makes that much bread unless they’re making it for the royal household or something. And 3 measures, that’s a lot of flour. And so, but again, it’s lesser to greater. It’s a similar parable, but here it’s talking about something slightly different. Now, may I say to you that many see leaven, and in truth, as you read the Bible, Old Testament to New Testament, every other place I look at leaven except for this parable, it’s in the negative sense.
That leaven is a negative influence, like sin or temptation, that if you put one grumbler in a group, everybody starts grumbling. If you have one sin in your life, it influences your whole life. And so leaven is almost, throughout the Scripture, used in a negative sense, and in fact, Paul is talking about leaven in that way in Galatians chapter 5, where he says, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. He’s talking about it like that in the negative sense, but here I believe it’s in the positive sense. And the reason I believe it’s in the positive sense is because Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is like leaven.
I’m pretty smart, see? I can just read that. Oh, He’s not saying that the kingdom of heaven is sinful, He’s not saying it’s negative. So here is the unique place in all the Scripture that He’s using leaven in the positive sense. You’ll see it again in Luke chapter 13, but it’s the same parable.
That’s the only 2 places in Scripture that I see leaven being used in the positive sense, because here leaven is a metaphor for influence, for influence. And we wonder, is the church influential? Is the church like salt? Is it like light? Is it like leaven in the city of Wilson?
Is Eastgate leaven? And when I talk about Eastgate, I’m not talking about this building, I’m talking about us. As we go out from this place, are we like leaven in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our schools, in our workplaces? Are we influencers? And it might look small, ’cause it is small, but it grows.
That’s the way he’s describing the kingdom here. Our inability to see God’s work does not mean that God isn’t at work. Ecclesiastes, Solomon talks about this, he says, just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God who does all things.
You can’t see the baby until 9 months go by, but God is forming, that child within the mother’s womb. The mother is aware of it more than anybody else. She occasionally will say to the husband, hey, look at this, put your hand right here.
But we wait to see what God has done in secret. As the prophet says, I was formed in a secret place, speaking of the mother’s womb. God’s at work. Think about it and how influential His work is. So don’t be discouraged that you don’t see instantaneous results when you pray for someone or when you share your faith with someone.
God’s at work. We pray for a child who seems far from God. We pray and share the gospel with a friend and they show little response. We teach Scripture week after week. I feel that as a pastor and many of you are, teaching your children, you’re teaching in your homes, in our community groups, you teach and you wonder whether anything is changing.
Jesus reminds us that the kingdom is working long before its effects become visible.
The kingdom is expanding, it’s rising in its influence, but its activity is mostly unseen until it appears. And so we see it when it appears, we see life change. One of the really challenging things about being a pastor or a parent is how long we must labor and care before we see what we’ve raised, what we’ve discipled, what the Lord has produced in us and through us. And so it’s, you have to, not become weary in well-doing, as the scripture says. You have to keep on keeping on.
And that’s why I think I like working in my yard so much. Hadn’t been as much fun this summer because of the drought. I like, I like working in a garden. I like it because I can see almost immediately what I’ve done. If I mow the grass, I can see the lines.
I can see, okay, I use the weed eater to trim the edges, and I’m like, man, that looks good. Like, in one day I can sit down and go get something to drink and just kind of lean back and go, look at this. And when my wife comes out, I go, hey, hold up, look at what I have accomplished today. Ladies, I’m gonna just give you a clue. That’s what men love more than anything.
Just go ahead and pat them on the back. Look what I did today. And it’s not like that pastoring. It’s not like that parenting. It’s lifelong, and you gotta just labor in the field.
It starts out so small, but then suddenly you’ll see life change in your child. You’ll see life change in the people of God as the Holy Spirit works. So what are you saying, Gary? Keep praying, keep serving, keep teaching, keep sharing, don’t give up. God’s working all the time.
What Christ is quietly doing today will become unmistakably visible tomorrow. And that leads us to the 3rd reason that we can trust that Christ’s kingdom is an unstoppable kingdom. It’s because its unfolding plan is proceeding just as God promised. It’s proceeding just as God said. We’re in verses 34 and 35, and now we’ve moved to a place where Matthew, inspired by the Holy Spirit, has inserted his thoughts about this section of parables.
And he says, all these things Jesus said to crowds in parables. All this, He’s teaching about the kingdom in parables. He goes, indeed, He said nothing to them without a parable. He just taught in parables all the time to the people. And we’ve talked about this before, for those who have ears to hear, that have spiritual receptivity, it’s revealing, the parables reveal.
But to those who don’t have spiritual ears to hear, it tends to conceal further for them because they don’t have spiritual understanding. He goes, but then He tells us why He’s doing it. He says, this was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet. What prophet is He speaking of? Well, He’s quoting Psalm 78:2.
So here he’s speaking of Asaph. He’s speaking of Asaph as a prophet because what Asaph is writing is Scripture and he’s inspired by the Holy Spirit to do it, and prophecy understood in this way is forthtelling the Word of God. It’s not foretelling the future, but it’s forthtelling what the Spirit has inspired. And so he says, this is what the prophet said, and then he quotes Psalm 78:2, I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world. There’s that word hidden.
I told you it would pop back up again. Perhaps this is why Jesus had the choice of hiding the leaven. He had the woman hiding it rather than kneading it in, which would’ve been a more appropriate kitchen term to use. He’s going to tie it to this parable that He’s a fulfillment, that Jesus as King is fulfilling the way the King would come and the way the kingdom would come, and it would come with the King uttering parables, and that He would expose hidden things. He would utter what has been hidden.
The word hidden here in Greek is of interest. It’s kryptos. It’s where we get the word cryptic. It’s the idea, if you go back to the Hebrew from Psalm 78:2, it’s the idea of a riddle, A mystery being solved. And so the threads were all there back in the Old Testament.
We see all of these prophecies, but now here comes Jesus. He’s piecing them together, but yet many still don’t see it. They still don’t hear it. But to those who have faith, who have been given faith to believe and ears to hear and eyes to see, it reveals the kingdom to them.
Now, why, Gary, do you say that it’s proceeding just as God promised? Because God said way back there through the prophet Asaph that that’s how the kingdom would come. So things are proceeding as planned. It’s not accidental the way the kingdom would come tiny and grow large. It’s not accidental that the way Jesus would come is teaching And all of this had been hidden, had been a riddle since the creation of the world, because even as God said, let there be light, even as God created man, He knew from the very beginning, from the foundation of the world, that He would send His Son Jesus to die on the cross for us.
Always, because God knows all things. And so we see here that Isaiah talks about this because what surprises us never surprises God. God, did You know that was going— Yeah, He did, He knew that was gonna happen. What looks unexpected may be exactly what He planned. Look what Isaiah says, he’s speaking on behalf of the Lord, the Lord is speaking through Isaiah.
I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, my counsel, my counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.
There are no coincidences. God is sovereign. God is God, and I’m not. He’s God, and I’m not, and you’re not. He’s God, and he will accomplish his purpose.
Have you ever tried to make a jigsaw puzzle without the box that has the cut, the, the picture on the on the top, just throw out a bunch of stuff. You know, here, a 1,000-piece puzzle. Where’d the box go? I don’t know, we used to have it. Somewhere along the line, Mama put it in a Ziploc bag.
That’s what life is like. It’s like, it’s like everything’s a puzzle, but only one person knows what the COVID looks like, and he’s up there. He’s the Lord.
I don’t know if your family was like my family. There was always a member of the family that took one piece early on and put it in their pocket. They would wait till the last and go, oh, I got that piece right there. You know, it’s like a jigsaw puzzle. It’s like a cross stitch.
Ladies know what a cross stitch is. Men probably don’t. I do because my wife for years was a cross stitcher. She’s moved on to other things she’s doing now, but we’ve got Our house is filled with cross stitches of hymns that she’s done. They’re beautiful.
But I remember she would show me her work as she was laboring on it before it was framed, and she would hand it to me and I would look at it from the wrong side, and I’d be like, what a mess, like threads going everywhere. And she’d go, you’re looking at the wrong side. And I flip it over and I go, oh, there’s a beautiful hymn. And when I look up sometimes, I go, what is going on, Lord? But from His point of view, He’s weaving together His plan to perfection.
We often become anxious when God’s work does not unfold according to our expectations.
Life has not gone the way I foresaw it, but as the old hymn says, Says, I wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now. I wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now. I’m gonna make it to heaven somehow. That’s an oldie right there. 3 of you knew it.
Here’s what we’ve not yet said this morning. Here’s what we’ve not yet said. The pattern in these 2 parables is not just a description of the kingdom. It’s a portrait of the King.
He came small, a babe in a manger.
Kings are born in palaces, but lambs are born in stables. Raised in Nazareth, so unimpressive that Nathanael asked, can anything good come from Nazareth? He worked hidden 30 years in obscurity before He stepped into public ministry and announced the kingdom is here.
And He was promised. Sending Jesus was God’s plan from the beginning. But then came the cross, a man dying outside of the walls of Jerusalem, His followers scattered, His body laid in a borrowed tomb. It looked like the smallest, most hidden ending imaginable. But 3 days later, He came out of that tomb.
He came out of that grave, and the first fruits of a harvest that is coming came forth. And that harvest is us, and it’s still coming. That harvest is his church. We’re part of that harvest, 2,000 years and thousands of miles from Galilee, here we are. The mustard seed has been planted and we are resting in its branches.
The King has come and wherever Christ is King, the kingdom has come and it’s not finished. Whenever we pray, Thy kingdom come, it’s not a wish. We’re praying for an unstoppable kingdom, a plan established before the foundation of the world, secured at the cross, proven by an empty tomb and moving towards It’s promised fulfillment. And that leaves us with only 2 responses this morning. For those of us that have not yet entered the kingdom, and that’s some of us this morning, every week there are people here that have not yet entered the kingdom, would you repent of your sin, turn from your sin, and turn to Jesus as King?
That’s the most important decision you could make today.
I repent of my sin, give me the faith to believe. I believe, help me with my unbelief. I wanna place my faith in Jesus today as my King and my Savior. And if you’re a believer today, your response is invest in the kingdom because it’s unstoppable. Serve, give, share, live, don’t give up because His kingdom may begin small and it may work hidden, But it’s unstoppable because King Jesus is unstoppable.
Let’s pray.
Lord, I pray for that one today that would say, I’m a sinner, but I turn from my sin today. Is that you? I turn to King Jesus. Pray with me. Dear Lord Jesus, I’m a sinner.
I believe You died on the cross for my sin, that You were raised from the grave, and that You live today. Come and live in me by Your Spirit. Forgive me of my sins. Adopt me into Your family as a child of God. I wanna follow You as my Lord and King and Savior all the days of my life.
I surrender my life to You. If you’re praying that prayer of faith, believing, the Bible says if you confess Jesus as Lord with your mouth and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Others are here today and you’re a believer, you’re a follower of Jesus, but you’ve been discouraged, you’ve given up praying for someone, you’ve given up sharing, you’ve been discouraged to the point that you’ve given up serving.
Would you just confess it and say, Lord, forgive me.
I had forgotten, Lord, the way things start small. Help me not to be discouraged because I’m small right now, knowing that you are great and that you live in me. Strengthen me now, Lord, to do those things that you’ve called us to do. In Jesus’ name, amen.
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we’re going to be in this series called Kingdom Come in a sermon we’ve titled this morning, The Unstoppable Kingdom. I think this is a great, a great title for this parable because these stand out in a unique way, and I can’t wait to share it with you. I want to remind those of you in the room who have been with us on the journey, we’ve pulled this series out of Matthew chapter 6, this prayer that I bet almost everyone in the room is familiar with. In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus gives us a model prayer which begins, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. And then He says something astounding.
He says, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done. What’s interesting about that phrase, Thy kingdom come, that He encourages and instructs us to pray, what’s interesting about that is He’s already said in many places, My kingdom is at hand. The kingdom of heaven is present. So there’s this surprising tension that we’re right in the middle of right now. And that is that the Kingdom of Heaven has come by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is coming in our lifetime, and will come fully.
So we’re in this already-not-yet kind of place when it comes to the Kingdom come. And so when Jesus says, pray Thy Kingdom come, He means it. Thy Kingdom come. Anytime we pray this prayer, Lord, Thy Kingdom come, we are inviting the rule and the reign of Christ Jesus in our lives and in the world around us. So we should be praying this prayer daily.
Lord, let Your kingdom come in my work, in my church, in my family, everywhere I am. I want Your kingdom there. Wherever Christ is King, there the kingdom of God reigns. And so there’s this wonderful tension. And what’s this parable today, what’s so great about this parable, is that we might have expected, and we probably still expect, that the kingdom of heaven would be spectacular and obvious.
And yet, both 2,000 years ago and now, it is not always that way. As we look at the world around us, as we look even at our own lives, at times we wonder, is God at work? Is He present? Is the kingdom of heaven really happening in my lifetime. This is the very reason that Jesus tells these 2 parables this morning, is to comfort us and encourage us that this is all what He has purposed and He is fulfilling now, and it’s always been this way.
Many in the first century expected Jesus to come, the Messiah to come, in this impressive and obvious way, and it’s not the case. Instead, He comes in obscurity. This creates a challenge for us. In your own life, I bet you feel this. I know I do at times.
Is what’s the Lord doing in this moment? I’m praying, Thy kingdom come, but I don’t always know where He’s moving. I don’t always see where He’s working. This is going to be a wonderful parable for you today to dig into this story where Jesus is encouraging us essentially not to worry about small beginnings. And small influence, that the kingdom may be a mustard seed, or it may even work into the world like the tiny leaven in bread that you cannot see, and yet God has purposed all of this, and that purpose, my friends, I want you to hear it, cannot be stopped, and He’s at work right now.
Let’s dig in. We’re going to be in Matthew 13, just a few verses together if you’ve got your Bibles. If you don’t, they’re on the screen, don’t worry, but Matthew 13:31-35, He gives us these 2 quick parables, and He’s teaching us that there’s a surprising way in which the kingdom of heaven is advancing, and we can trust in this. As we read the words of Jesus, we can trust that His kingdom is advancing even when we don’t see it all the time, even when it’s not obvious to us all the time. We can trust and have courageous faith.
So let’s dig in. Here’s the scripture, and then we’ll dig into it. Matthew 13:31-35, it says, He, He is Jesus here, put another parable before them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and he sowed in his field. Now it’s the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown, it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests and its branches. He told them yet another parable, saying, the kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in 3 measures of flour till it was all leavened.
All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables. Indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet: I will utter— I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world. This is God’s word.
Amen. I pray this encourages you today right where you need it. I know it can. I’m praying for that all week for you. We can trust that Christ’s kingdom is unstoppable.
The first parable tells us this because small beginnings cannot limit its ultimate growth. Small beginnings cannot limit its ultimate growth. Jesus compares the eternal, amazing kingdom of heaven to a seed, to a seed so small it can be hard to miss. I mean, it can be easy to miss, I should say. Among garden seeds, it’s one of the smallest.
I admittedly did way too much work this way this week on mustard. I do this a lot. I dig into passages and get real enamored with something obscure. That’s— you don’t have to hear every bit of this, but there’s a lot of details about mustard that are rattling around in my head now that are useless, one of which is the fact that mustard— there are like 3 different types of mustard plants. I never would have guessed.
I just picture yellow mustard that’s good on hot dogs. That’s what I picture. Those of you in the room who are putting ketchup on hot dogs need help. Mustard belongs there. If you want to do both, that’s diabolical, but go for it.
But mustard, I’m thinking, well, guess what? Here in America, we get yellow mustard. There in the Middle East where Jesus is teaching, it’s more of a black seed. It’s crazy. And the way this plant looks is very different according to where it is in the world.
And so ours are somewhat similar when he says it’s a small seed. It is here in the States as well, and it can grow to a plant that’s as much as 10 feet tall. It’s a huge plant. Here where Jesus is teaching, this type of mustard could grow up to 30 feet, so He says it can become a tree. This is not a seed you plant in your nice little garden, right?
It’ll take over. So He’s saying this little tiny seed is like the kingdom of heaven. He tells them, I’m teaching this, all of this, in parables. I love what one commentator says about parables. The reason that He’s doing this, I feel, is that it would really move us to ask questions.
This one commentator writes that parables arrest our attention with vividness and strangeness that causes us to have sufficient doubt about the precise application of the word. So it causes us to look at it and go, what does He mean by this? What does He mean by mustard? What does He mean about tree and birds and leaven? And it causes us to go, What are we dealing with here?
It’s great. I love this. This is the way he teaches it. And here he says, in fact, the kingdom of heaven, this eternal kingdom, this thing that you would expect to be absolutely spectacular and mind-blowing and comes with trumpets and kings, and now it comes so small you can barely see it. Surprising.
Surprising to the first century. Surprising to us that the kingdom of heaven is continuing to progress in small beginnings, in little bitty ways, little things that might seem really small to you. Like, in the scheme of things, Rocky Mount, North Carolina is a very small place. And if you drive around and you eat in this town, you’ll notice there’s some small-town behavior. And sometimes that’s good, sometimes that’s bad.
You’ll get— maybe if you spend enough time in a place like this, you’ll get an impression that God’s move is very insignificant, but you can’t see it all. You can’t see all the details. I spent some time in Africa some years ago in Uganda, and I saw, wait a minute, God’s moving over here too. God’s moving in Africa. God’s moving.
You start to— if you spend too much time in one place, you might get the perspective that, man, I’m not sure what God’s up to. Trust me, it’s in ways you cannot see. He says it’s like a mustard seed that’s getting large as a tree, and the way he describes it seems to be implying that eventually it’s going to become this thing that all all of existence rests upon. The birds of the heavens now rest on its branches. I think we’ve kind of seen that even in our nation, that so much of what makes this a great nation is that it was founded primarily on gospel values.
And so in some ways, our nation has benefited greatly in this way. I think it’s referring— Jesus is probably in his teaching here referring to Ezekiel 31, where it says all the birds of the heavens made their nests in its boughs. Under its branches, all the beasts of the field gave birth to their young, and under its shadow lived all great nations. So the gospel is becoming this great tree to which all will rest. This is how God so often works.
This is why I think this could be an incredible message to you today, because you might feel very insignificant in where you are right now. Maybe you’re the youngest kid in the family. Maybe you’re the baby. Maybe you’re low on the totem pole at work. Maybe you’re just at a workplace that just feels insignificant.
It’s not that you’re low on it, but it just— what you do doesn’t feel like a big deal. Maybe to some degree you feel small, and I want you to hear, man, God loves that. He’s all in on that. That’s the way in which He introduces the gospel to the world. Is in a little old place with no— not a king, not a palace, but a barn.
This is great. The gospel’s coming this way. In fact, God talks about this kind of behavior constantly. It’s almost as if the Lord prefers those who think little of themselves that he might can use them. I really do think there’s something under that, that it’s very, very difficult for the Lord to use someone who’s prideful.
Who thinks, man, I can accomplish this. Some of the scariest ministry I’ve ever done in my life are the times where I thought, I can handle this, and I found out I can’t handle this, because there’s a certain level that I need desperately for the Spirit of God to help me, give me the right words, and to navigate the emotions. And those are those moments where I feel the smallest where I see God really show up in a powerful way. There’s many places I could take you. One of my favorites that God uses is the story of this man named Zerubbabel who’s supposed to be rebuilding the temple of God after it’s all been destroyed and they’ve been exiled, and he’s bummed because he recognizes everything that once was is not what we’re going to be able to build again.
I don’t have the same materials, I don’t have the same wealth. What we’re about to build for God this time is going to be small, and it’s not going to be significant, and he’s feeling like, I don’t even know if we should do it. And yet God shows up through the prophet Zechariah and says, I want you to hear these words today, church. Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices. He rejoices to see the work begin and to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand.
He’s pumped to just see you doing the work. You’re missing the boat if you think, man, I’ve got to build, I’ve got to do this miraculous— if I don’t make a huge dent in my generation, then I have not succeeded. That’s not God. That’s your pride, and you need to lay that down and say, no, it would be better for me to do what God told me to do in my season. And that might look like great temples or just trying to lay a foundation.
Some of the people in your life, in fact, you won’t be the one to get to see them finally come to faith. It won’t be you, but you’ll get to plant one little seed. That maybe one day you’ll hear later, hey, I didn’t forget that. It might have seemed small to you, but the Lord used this, this, this, this, and this, and finally I came to faith. Daniel, in fact, interprets one of Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams in Daniel chapter 2.
He’s describing what it will look like for God’s kingdom to come. He says in Daniel 2, he says, the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. There’s this amazing image that represents the nations, and one day will come a stone, which is the kingdom of heaven, the gospel, and it will crush it all and become itself a great mountain. So again and again, this story is told. There’s a reason that probably, I would argue, maybe the most well-known Bible story is literally this idea of small to great.
And it’s the story of David and Goliath. You can go, I bet, to almost any place in the world and people will know some version of that story. I’ve never met anyone, I have literally never met anyone who has not heard of David and Goliath. So how has that story become so well known? It’s like God said, I’m gonna make such a captivating story that really describes the gospel that everyone will know it.
And what is it describing? That God will take very small things and defeat very great things. He will take very small things and make foolishness that which is great. That this little bitty boy who’s not even a grown man, probably a teenager, and you could picture some of our teens over there, skinny little boy, right? Goes and gets a stone, gets a couple.
I don’t know why he gets a couple because apparently he’s pretty stinking accurate and takes out Goliath. I heard one person, I’ve heard some other people say that maybe the reason he got multiple stones is not because he thought he’d miss. He thought he might have to take out Goliath and his brothers. And so he was ready for a few. That’s pretty cool.
I hope that’s the case. I’ll have to ask him later when I get up there, why’d you get so many stones? But he does the work. What is— how is it possible? It’s not because David is great, and that’s not how the story is told.
The story is told that God is great and that God uses little things to defeat the great, the wise, the mighty. In fact, that’s the story all through the New Testament. I want you to hear this today, that you should be very careful not to despise the small work that you’re accomplishing right now. Those little bitty moments where you get to tell truth or be good or be merciful or show grace to people that you think they’re not receiving. There’s moments like this all the time where you can get discouraged that a conversation didn’t go the way you thought it should go.
That you really meant well. You wanted your neighbor, your coworker, your family member, your friend— you wanted them to hear that God has been good and has saved you, and yet you feel like you didn’t express that well. And so you’re discouraged. I want you to hear something. You are not the seed.
You’re merely the one planting it alongside the Spirit of God. You have no power as to whether it will become a great tree or not. All you have power over is whether you will open your mouth when the time is right, whether or not you will show your mercy and grace when the time is right. I’ve found that some of the most powerful moments in my life where people really heard from God are not the moments that I’d planned for or that I thought I got right. I told first service this.
I feel it’s probably ideal to tell you. I have accidentally led people to Jesus before, and that’s a crazy thing to say. I really didn’t even mean to do it, and it happened. My best friend in high school, we were hanging out late one night, And he was asking me all kinds of questions about the gospel, and here was my goofy self. I thought he was already a Christian.
I knew he went to church, and in so many ways he showed like he was a good person, so I kind of made some assumptions there. And late one night, I can’t remember, we were mostly just talking about girls we liked and stuff that high schoolers talk about, and all of a sudden he starts talking about, tell me more about the gospel and Jesus and the cross, and what is that prayer that you prayed? It’s like, are you— I’m like, buddy, are you, are you saying you don’t know how to pray this prayer? Like, at 2 in the morning, I finally realized he wants to pray this prayer.
So I led my, my best friend to the Lord by accident. Made me start wanting to get more intentional, I’ll tell you that. Made me start going, I wonder if more people want this kind of thing and I’m just too blind to even notice. And what seemed really small to me, just hanging out late one night, was a move of God.
Be careful. Be careful you don’t be discouraged by small, small beginnings. That’s the first. That’s a beautiful point. I love this second one.
This one really moved me this week. We can trust in an unstoppable kingdom, trust in the God who’s bringing it, because its hidden working cannot prevent its rising influence. Its hidden working cannot prevent its rising influence. Jesus here turns from the field where we’ve been for several weeks. He’s been planting.
Now He hops into the kitchen for the first time and starts talking about leaven and bread. I love this imagery. I don’t know if He meant it to rhyme so well. It rhymes so well in English. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven.
It’s awesome. And leaven is this very small, almost microscopic thing that moves in flour and makes it rise and become something worth eating. Now, unleavened bread is okay, let me just say that, but here he’s talking about this idea of something that makes the whole lump rise, the whole loaf become larger. It’s one of the only places in the New Testament where this is used in a positive sense. Most of the time when we see leaven show up both in Old and New Testament, it is negative.
In fact, Paul, when he writes about this in Galatians, he says, hey, you guys were doing well. Oh, Galatia, you were doing so well. You heard the gospel. You were living for Christ. And then these legalists showed up, these Pharisaic people, and they start telling you, no, you’re not following right.
You got to do this, this, and this to follow right. And to them, he says, Hey, be careful about that because just a little bit of leaven will affect the whole lump. And so you start bringing in this stuff that isn’t gospel and it’ll mess up everything God’s been working on. There’s certainly a warning there, but that’s not what Jesus is doing here. Jesus is talking about— he said the kingdom of heaven is like this little bitty thing that affects the whole lump, that changes the world.
The gospel came 2,000 years ago in this little bitty place among these very insignificant people, and it changed the world. Miles, thousands of miles away, 2,000 years later, here we sit worshiping King Jesus because a little bit of leaven leavens the whole lump. Now, this isn’t a small amount of flour. As I said earlier, I just dig into things that may not even be a big deal to you. Every single word to me is the breath of God.
So every single word I look at, some of them go, okay, well, there’s not much I can do with the word thee, so we’re going to move on from thee. But like he says, it’s leaven that goes into 3 measures of flour. I’m like, 3 measures of flour? What’s significant about that? There’s actually a ton, an absolute ton of writing on this.
And people think all kinds of thoughts. Does it mean this idea of all peoples? Because sometimes in Scripture, the 3 types of people are described as Jew, Gentile, and barbarian. I might be that barbarian, y’all. I’m just saying, I was once a barbarian.
But perhaps that’s what he means, that all of mankind will be leavened, will be changed by the Gospel. Maybe. Maybe it has a Trinitarian view in mind, that in every way the image of God will be known. I think most likely it’s just simply a standard of measurement that they would have been familiar with. In fact, this word here, 3 measures, is not a small amount of flour.
It’s a Greek measurement which equates to what is in the Hebrew this word ephah. If you know your Bibles well, there’s a lot of places in the Old Testament where you see this amount of bread being made called an ephah. And so here it’s that same measurement, and it’s not just like enough to feed your family. This is somewhere around 50 pounds of flour, so this could feed well over 100 people. So when Jesus is giving this terminology, the people would be like, okay, we’re preparing a feast.
When they heard this, they’d be going, all right, this is like a wedding. This is a major feast that you’re talking about, and a little bit of leaven comes in and changes this large feast. He’s not saying, hey, this is enough just to impact your family. He’s saying this Gospel is going to change the world. This thing that looks insignificant, that you can’t even see, is going to create great influence.
I want you to hear something as you dig into that, just that little nugget today, that our inability to see God at work does not mean He’s not at work. And we get really tied up on this kind of stuff. If I can’t see Him move, I can’t believe that He is, and you’d be wrong about that. In fact, He tells us more than just in this place that God is unseen and works in unseen ways, and this parable is a reminder that the gospel is not only activating in your life in a way that you can’t always see, but it’s activating in this world in a way that you can’t always see, and to doubt that God is at work is foolishness. Because He doesn’t always reveal Himself in the ways that you would most expect.
It’s another place that I would take you in Scripture, in Ecclesiastes 11. It says, just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb, you cannot understand the activity of God who does all things. This is amazing. I’m not a bread maker by any stretch of the imagination. I’m sure there’s a few of you in the room, that are bread makers.
I was kind of looking into this this week trying to understand this, and I know to some degree that it takes— you take this leaven and you fold it in and you fold it in and you work it in, and some of you have the hands that have actually dedicated to this and done this. I don’t have the patience for that kind of activity. I’m not a fisherman for the same reason. I will go buy a fish at the store. All right?
It’s not for me. I want instant results. But some of you want to knead the dough and get it all right, and then you leave it and it expands and it’s awesome. And some of you are so tedious, you come and you make little shapes in it so when it rises, oh cool. I mean, if I was making it, it would just look like— and maybe it would taste good, but God would only know.
I mean, so you knead this. This woman has come and she has mixed in the leaven and she’s kneading it in. So in this activity, in fact, You can’t, you can’t see the leaven the moment you introduce it. You can’t see how it’s working as you mold it in. And so here I think Jesus is describing 2 things, both his work that he’s doing, an unseen work in us, but also perhaps to some degree we are this woman, those of us in Christ Jesus who would love to see our loved ones come to faith, who would love to see the move of God in our lifetime.
And I pray, believer, if you’ve come today and you don’t want to see a move of God in your life, you need a better vision for your life. I want to see a move of God in my life, and sir, perhaps I’m like this woman and I don’t know what the leaven’s doing. I just know He’s called me to knead it in and leave it for Him to grow. That’s all I can do. I can’t create this move of God in their life.
This is why I think He gives this imagery. I want to give you a couple of applications on this thought. Because there’s some things I think we’re doing all the time that we underestimate, and perhaps we stop them at times and miss the whole, the whole work of God in our life. I want to give you a few things that perhaps some of you, like me, you want desperately to hear God speak. I pray you would want that.
You shouldn’t want anything more than that. There’s nothing better in this life than to know your Creator. I pray constantly, Lord, I want to see you. I want to know you. I want to hear your voice.
It’s what I want more than life itself. If you’ve created me for yourself, then, then what else could I possibly want more than to know you and hear you? And sometimes I have trouble hearing him. That’s good news, my friends, to you that you might think you might have come today, all these pastors got this thing figured out. No, we don’t.
We’re just like you. We have to do the same operation to try to hear from him. And here’s the thing about the Lord. He says, you will seek me and you will find me when you seek me with your whole heart. And my problem is I don’t give him even a portion of my heart at times.
He gets such a minuscule amount of me that I can’t hear him, and then I blame him that he’s not speaking. Yeah, I want you to hear something, my friends. It might seem petty to say that the way in which you hear from God is in prayer and in his word, but this is his primary toolkit. This is the way in which He desires to speak to you most. And there are other times he’ll speak through people.
There are other times he’ll speak through events. There are even impressive times where you really feel like he’s just speaking in your life outside of these. But I want you to hear, if you’ve made the decision, I don’t want to deal with this checklist. I’m not going to be a person who’s in prayer and in his word. I don’t— I just don’t feel like God should have to speak that way.
If you’ve made that decision, I want you to hear he’s probably not going to speak to you in other ways.
But if you will do these things, he might very well speak to you in many ways.
In fact, studies have shown, and this is all data points, but it’s true, that a person who will spend time in prayer and in their word the majority of the week will have significant impact. That means, and the study showed it this way, that if you did it at least 4 times out of 7 days, Anything 4 or more greatly lowered the way people felt about their loneliness, the way they felt about their insignificance, the way they felt about their anxiety. I’m talking drastic results. And that’s on the positive side. On the negative habit side, they saw massive reduction in bad addictions and things like that, from alcohol to drugs to pornography.
All of it lowers not just a small percentage, we’re talking more than half.
Just, just from time spent in his word. If you doubt this, I bet it’s because you’ve never really tried it. If you’ll spend, spend 6 weeks in prayer daily and in his word and see if it doesn’t begin to really change you and affect you, the way you think, the way you interpret life. Here’s another one that seems really small and really petty and seems like something a pastor would definitely say to you. And I’m going to say it to you, that if you go to church 2 or more Sundays a month, it will greatly change your marriage.
I can’t— I’ve never found a negative study on this. In fact, every one of them is positive that it begins to make you feel more at one with your wife, your husband, and your children. I have some reasons for that, number one being because Christ is King. And He loves you and He loves your family and the opponent, the evil one, hates you and your family and is thankful you’re not here when you’re not here. But the Lord loves you, but there’s something really cool that I think is happening underneath that, that when we get a shared vision together, it changes our family.
So, and there’s no better vision, there’s no better mission than to say we are an eternal people with an eternal destination. So now all of a sudden, our wives, our husbands, our children, now we’re both looking the same direction and it changes everything. My dad used to use this illustration. Do y’all remember these clackers? They were— it was a pole with 2 balls on the end and you just go clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack.
Y’all remember those? Some of you do. Young people, I don’t know. We were bored. I mean, we were bored.
We got in trouble because we were bored. I grew up in Wilson. We got in trouble because there’s nothing to do in Wilson. All right, so clack, clack, clack. But his illustration was really great, that if you picture yourself as the 2 ends, that if— kind of picture this clacker thing— if you are looking at each other, so picture the strings going towards the pole, if you spend all your time looking at each other, you’re the farthest apart.
But the moment you lift up They clack together and both of them are looking up.
So something powerful happens, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. Something powerful happens when you raise your vision. All of a sudden, the family clacks together because we all have a shared vision. We have a shared mission. That’s a powerful thing.
So you might think these are little, they’re not obvious. It’s not obvious to me that reading my Bible is gonna change anything. What crazy thing is that, that if I read this book, it’s gonna change my life? That’s not obvious to me, and yet I’m telling you, my friend, it’s a game changer. It’s not obvious to me that if I, like a weirdo, go sit by myself and talk to myself, that it’s gonna affect me.
But as I’m not talking to myself, I’m talking up. I’m going vertical. Now it might look crazy, and I’m one of these types that I like to pace, so it probably looks real crazy because I’m gonna— I mean, I’m— I probably look nuts, and it’s not obvious to me that that should work, and yet it keeps working and changing me. And when I pray for you, and when I pray— especially when I pray for situations that I’m most anxious about or people that I’m most frustrated about, God moves my heart, and I can’t help but love you. I can’t help but show mercy.
Don’t become discouraged because you cannot see the results of Christ’s work. Some of you in the room have been praying for a family member a long time. Some of you in the room have been praying for a lost child. For a long time. I think that’s one of the hardest things you’ll face.
I want you to hear this: a little leaven changes the lump. It’s not time to stop praying. It is not time to lose hope. It is not time to stop speaking truth into their life. The opposite is true.
Pray more, speak more, hope more, because God can do it. And will do it, and often in ways you could have never expected. Do not give up. Keep praying, keep sharing, keep teaching, keep serving. Trust that Christ is at work because what is now invisible will one day be unmistakably visible.
Here’s the third. This one I think was the most challenging of this text out of verses 34 and 35. We can trust in God’s unstoppable kingdom because Its unfolding plan is proceeding just as God promised. This is the way He planned it. It’s just as He promised.
Jesus— in fact, Matthew at this point, the Gospel writer here, Matthew, he has a bit of an aside. We’ve been hearing Jesus teach on parables from soils to wheat and tares to this tree that— this seed that becomes a tree to leaven. Parable, parable, parable. And in this moment, Matthew steps back and he says, Just so y’all know, reader, that whole day Jesus taught in parables. It was wild.
And even us, the disciples, because you see it in the text, we didn’t get it, but we wanted to get it. We wanted to get it, and that’s what separated them from some of the others who heard it and walked away. And so here Jesus teaches only in parables. It’s one of the only places that we know of that He did the whole day of teaching. Now why does He do that?
We don’t know. We do know here that Matthew tells us the primary reason He did it was to fulfill the prophecy, and this is a weird prophecy. It comes out of the book of Psalms of all places, Psalm 78. He’s quoting a Psalm of Asaph here, Psalm 78:2. It says, I’ll teach in parables.
I’ll utter these hidden things that have been around since the foundation of the world. So why does Jesus do it? Well, He’s fulfilling prophecy. It means He’s doing exactly what He planned to do. But more than that, I think there’s a bit of a sifting going on here.
There’s like a straining going on, that Jesus would teach in such a way that to some it’s revelation. Hopefully to you this morning, I pray more than anything that this is revelation, that you go, I want to know this Jesus. I want to live for Him. I want to be a part of His Kingdom. I want to ask, Am I in this tree?
Am I in this bread? Or last week, am I the wheat or am I the weeds? Like, that’s the right questions, but to others it conceals. So He’s like straining the people out. Why?
Well, perhaps it’s because these people have been following Him around and some of them are just coming because, hey, He fed some people recently and I’m pretty hungry. Some of them are coming going, man, I heard He healed a blind man. I heard He did— we’re here to see Him do something cool. Dance monkey, dance! And Jesus says, a little leaven the kingdom of heaven is like.
And the people are like, but you said, but you said he did tricks. I don’t see no tricks. And they all walk away. But to others, to others, they heard it and went, I got to know this kingdom of heaven. I got to know more.
I want to be wheat and not weeds. I want to be on this. I want to be in this tree.
And it says in verse 35, quoting this prophecy, he’s going to utter something that was hidden from the foundation, from the foundation of the world. I, I think one of the coolest things in this passage is Christ reminding us and revealing something again, that him coming and him sacrificing was never planned It was never Plan B. It was planned. It was Plan A. I want you to— if, if you get nothing else today, if you’ve come in today and you, you’ve not been walking with Jesus, this is not something you’ve put your faith in, I’m glad you’re here. I’m thankful you’re here.
I want you to hear something. Jesus coming and sacrificing and rising from the grave for you was God’s Plan A. What does that mean? That means from the moment that God began to create, He knew very well that you and me would exist many years later and would have some trouble. He knew Adam and Eve would fail.
He knew thousands of years later that I would fail, that I would think things, do things, act a certain way that would be displeasing to Him. In spite of that, in spite of the millions, if not billions of people He said, I’m doing it. I’m creating because I love them and I want them, and I’m planning to save them. So there was never a moment where God created this world and everything in it and went, oh my goodness, look what they’re doing! I never would have guessed.
No, He knew. It broke His heart. In spite of that, He said, you know what? That Jonathan comes one day, I gotta have that guy. That Randy Tuttle, that Devin, that— I want them.
Why? I don’t know. I don’t know why He wanted me. I’m a mess, but He did. He sure did.
And He said, Plan A, just as God promised from the foundation of the world, He’s going to show up some thousands of years later. He’s going to teach in parables. He’s going to have many people begin to follow Him in this very small and obscure place, and then one day He’s going to take on the cross for you and me and for humanity as a whole, all of our sin, and then He’s going to rise from the grave and He’s going to conquer sin and death. It’s going to be defeated, and He did all of it according to plan. There’s a lot of ways to be encouraged by that, my friend, but number one of which is He knows you, He loves you, and He wants you.
I hope you can hear that today. Bigger than that still, He is in control, has always been, will always be. Nothing is surprising to Him. Everything that sifts through, He allows. What His purposes are are not always clear, but He’s in charge and in control.
But what surprises us never surprises God. And Isaiah the prophet writes, chapter 46, I am God, there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand, I will accomplish all my purpose.
There’s a great puzzle that God is putting together right now. He’s been doing it for thousands of years from creation to this point. He’s coming again. And then all of it will make sense, but right now we’re looking at it and we don’t have the full picture in mind. A few years ago, my wife had this great idea of buying us a puzzle for Christmas.
She said, this is gonna be a great family activity. We’re gonna work together and we’re gonna make a puzzle, and she bought the hardest puzzle I’ve ever seen in my life. This puzzle was of a castle and everything was dark and grays and blacks and a night sky, and you couldn’t tell what was floor and what was ceiling. You couldn’t tell. We were looking at the box together going, I don’t have a clue.
I don’t have a clue. We couldn’t even figure out how to get the border right. And if you don’t have the border, I mean, you’re really shot. We spent maybe a day or two over Christmas break, the family, at times going in and going— we gave up. Me and the kids, me and the kids gave up.
But Nicole, it was her idea. She had to see it through. Now, I think it took her well beyond Christmas break. That, that particular puzzle is on this sheet upstairs that we rolled up because we knew we will never ever build that puzzle again. Let it be built from now until eternity.
No one else shall ever build this puzzle again. It is built. And I guess we were thinking we’d hang it one day because it was such a monument of the the dreadful Christmas present. Have we bought another puzzle? God, no.
We buy Legos sometimes. Those are actually fun. Those are real fun. Now, I think puzzles could be fun, but for the love of God, please buy one with some color, just for your own benefit. Here’s what I know about that.
It was super hard to build, and I could tell you this, if we hadn’t had the box There’s no way. If we hadn’t had a picture, there’s no way. I want y’all to hear something today. This is such a beautiful picture because you are wanting to see the puzzle complete, and you got a lot of problems. First of all, you don’t have the picture.
You don’t have the box. You don’t even have all the puzzle pieces. You have opened up life with a puzzle that’s missing parts. And doesn’t have a picture. Now, do those things exist?
Yes, but they’re not in your hands. He has them, and He’s revealing them over time. So before you start going, man, I don’t like the way my life is coming together. I think it’s missing parts. No, it ain’t.
You just don’t know what parts go where. You don’t have the picture. He knows exactly what He made, exactly how He intended it, This last little piece is so encouraging because we often become anxious not knowing what God’s unfolding, and it’s not always according to our expectations. I thought I was going to be this. Look, y’all, it wasn’t that long ago where I was determined to be either an architect or a sports commentator.
I spent most of my high school career playing sports and watching ESPN. Thinking, I’m doing this with my life. I am not going to be a pastor. My dad’s a pastor. I don’t like what he does.
I like church. Hey, I like Jesus. I like church. I like all that, but I see people coming over to the house and the way they treat him sometimes. I ain’t doing it.
God said, bet. I’ve been preparing you this whole time. You just didn’t know it. I went and got a communication degree and said, I got some communication. God said, I got some communication for you.
Media performance. I’m going to perform in news. Someone recently said— this is cheesy, so I’m going to say it was someone else, not me— said, well, you are sharing the good news.
That’s below me. I just want to say that’s below my humor.
Don’t be anxious about where you are right now. Your confidence should not be based in what you see. It should be based in what God has planned. He loves you. He knows you.
He loves you so much that He did everything in order for you to be well and to be saved. You understand the love of God for you. It is beyond what you could fathom. His mercy and grace are beyond what you could imagine, and as He’s come here teaching in this parable, He wants you to not be discouraged but encouraged that this little stuff you’re doing, every bit of it matters. And if you would just determine, I’m going to take seriously this next conversation, this next chance I get to go to work, I’m going to clock in on time because somebody might be watching.
I’m going to work hard because somebody might be affected by it, because all of my work is unto the Lord and not unto men. Every conversation, I’m going to take seriously what I say to people, especially in this area. Now, we can joke, we can have fun. I’m not saying we’re going to be these automatons and very unfun people. Christians should be super fun because we know where we’re going.
We have— we can live fearlessly. But the way in which I approach people when it comes to the gospel, I’m taking every thought captive and trying my best to have confidence that rests in Christ. I hope you hear this this morning. I want to finish with this thought, this final act, that this whole parable is really a portrait of King Jesus. He’s talking, I think, here about— certainly he says the kingdom of heaven is like, but in a lot of ways the gospel came like it.
It came small, it came hidden, and it came promised. How did it come small? Do you know King Jesus didn’t come born in a throne somewhere? The, the most dominant and powerful nation on the planet when Jesus appears is not Israel. It was Rome.
But Jesus isn’t born in Rome. He’s not even born in King Herod’s palace in Israel. He’s born in a barn in Bethlehem. Small beginnings, yes. Does it come hidden?
Some of you would really, really be bothered by this idea. Jesus does not start His public ministry until He’s 30 years old. I’ve got a lot of people in this room right now that aren’t even 30 yet, and you’re going, when is God going to show me what I’m supposed to do? Yeah, well, maybe be faithful in what he’s already shown you so far, because he might not trust you with more until, until he sees, okay, this guy’s actually going to say yes.
Moses was 80 years old when he finally got the word from the Lord to go back in. I don’t even know if I’ll get to 80.
It came promised to— I’ve said this already. But Jesus is God’s Plan A. He died on the cross for you and I. He rose from the grave. Friends, sin is dealt with.
Death is defeated. And now we get to be a part of the harvest. We get to be a part of planting seed, little seed that looks insignificant, but God can use mightily. A little bit of leaven that we get to fold in with the King of Kings. And we’ll see what the Lord does.
And we trust, as we opened, as we pray, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Let’s pray now together, church. Heavenly Father, thank You for this good and encouraging word. We desperately need it. We look at our world around us and our lives, and at times we go, Lord, I don’t know what You’re doing.
I’m discouraged at times by it. I can’t see where You’re moving. I can’t see what You’re changing. Lord, help me today as I hear your word today. Help me to trust you.
Help me to, help me to understand how to lay my anxieties and my fears and my worries. Help, help me to lay them at your feet, that I would wholeheartedly trust you and what you’re, you’re doing in my life and what you’re doing in the lives around me. Lord, help me to be faithful with my conversation, with my work, with my loved ones, with my family. Help me to be faithful.
Lord, for that person who’s come in here today, and up until this point they’ve sat on the outside of the kingdom of heaven. Maybe they’ve heard this good news before, that God loves them, created them, wants them, died for them, saved them. Maybe they’ve heard that. I pray today would be the day that they would no longer sit on the outside but would rest in the branches. Of this great gospel, as you said in your word today.
Friend, if that’s you, there’s a reason you’re here today. It’s not an accident. You might have thought, man, I just got to go here so my friend or my loved one will leave me alone about it. It wasn’t for that reason, my friend. This is an opportunity to say yes to Jesus.
If you’re willing today, you feel the Lord calling you today, would you pray a simple prayer with me? Pray this: Jesus, I believe today that you died on the cross for my sin, and I believe that you rose from the grave and conquered death. That gives me great hope. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for saving me and rescuing me from sin and death. Lord, I ask now, would you guide me?
Would you help me to walk with you in a way that That my life would look like this mustard seed, that it would— it’s starting small. We’re just starting today, Lord, but that it would bear a lot of fruit in my life, that people would see my newness in Christ, the way I speak, the way I work, that I would be encouraged in my faith and that it would change my life. Would you do that, Lord, in me?
Dear friend, if you prayed that prayer with me, I would ask a simple favor. Would you let someone know today? Perhaps the person you came with. You can write it down on a card. There needs to be some people praying for you in this season.
Let someone know. And we’re praying with you, my friend. Lord, help us to be the kind of people that although we’re doing little things like devotional life and little conversations, Lord, I pray that they would bear a lot of fruit in people’s lives and in our own. That you would rescue our, our marriages, our parenting, that you would, you would do those little things as we honor you in the little details and that they would, they would make amazing results that you and you alone control. We love you.
We pray all of these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Jesus spoke about the kingdom in ways that created a surprising tension. He said the kingdom was “at hand,” or had drawn near. He said it had “come upon” them. He said it was “in their midst.” Yet He also taught His disciples to keep praying, “Your kingdom come.”
So the kingdom was near. It was present. It was already breaking into the world through the King. And yet, in another sense, it was still coming. The great surprise was not whether God’s kingdom would come, but how it would come.
We tend to trust what is big, visible, immediate, and measurable. So when the gospel seems small in comparison to the powers of this world, when the culture seems increasingly resistant to Christ, or when the work of God appears to be slow and hidden, we can begin to wonder whether His kingdom is really advancing. But Jesus warned us not to worry about small beginnings and little influence. The kingdom may begin like a mustard seed and work like leaven, but what God has purposed through His Son cannot be stopped.
In Matthew 13:31–35, Jesus taught two parables revealing the surprising manner in which the kingdom of heaven enters and advances in the world.
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