Small and Invisible

Intro

Welcome

Series: Kingdom: Matthew 13

1) Discovering what it means and what it looks like to become citizens in the Kingdom of God.

d. Prayer

Transition

There is rarely a movement in history that began “big.”

1)Judaism began with one man

2) Rome was a relatively small group of 7 villages in the middle of the Italian Peninsula that grew to take over the Mediterranean world.

3) The United States began with a small group of Liberty Seeking New Englanders.

Almost every single significant movement began small and relatively insignificant.

And ultimately, the greatest movement with humble beginnings…and my personal favorite…is the church.

But even within the church, there are a ton of movements that followed this same pattern:

Protestantism

Baptists (known originally as “Se-Baptists”)

Anabaptists

Methodism

Pentecostalism (began in a small house in L.A.)

And today…we are going to look at a parable that is truly subversive…It is a projection of How Jesus desires to operate. Not by bombast or power…but through the ordinary.

Matthew 13:31-33

Matthew 13:31–33 CSB

He presented another parable to them: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It’s the smallest of all the seeds, but when grown, it’s taller than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the sky come and nest in its branches.” He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and mixed into fifty pounds of flour until all of it was leavened.”

An Insignificant Kingdom: Mustard Seed

Why does Jesus often use the mustard seed analogy? He also uses this in Matthew 17:

1) Mustard seed was proverbial in ancient Palestine for smallness. Everyone knew what you were talking about when you said something like “A drop of blood like a mustard seed” which was a common reference of the day to denote the need to wash. So this isn’t Jesus declaring a falsehood of what is the smallest seed (the Cyprus tree has a smaller seed) but instead He is using a colloquialism.

2) Jesus is the first to explain bigness out of smallness

No, the Palestinian mustard plant (which is different than our mustard plants) are not the biggest shrub in the area. But they do grow big. In some cases 12-20 feet tall.

When you think of some of the greatest movements in history, we often think of the great lives and minds who led them:

But the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. It’s so insignificant and it is led by insignificant people.

Common, uneducated fishermen and farmers, carpenters and women, tax collectors and disreputable characters—it would all seem rather distasteful. But God is like that. He takes distasteful characters and transforms them, and then transforms society through them.

Why is the Kingdom so insignificant?

Among the seemingly larger (or in our case louder) worldly cults around…The Kingdom seems small. It seems like we are nothing more than simply a mustard seed. “Birds nest in it’s branches”

Daniel 4 and Ezekiel 17—So big that it will even influence Gentiles.

Grown by what many would consider insignificant people:

Not power hungry people

Not by priests, or religious scholars, or the “generally elite” people of this world.

Not the famous

Not people who are concerned with making a ton of money and owning big businesses and things

God chooses to use ordinary, everyday, run of the mill people.

From the worlds perspective this Kingdom is insignificant—but it’s become the most earth shattering and world changing movment in History.

An Invisible Kingdom: Yeast

We bought a pizza oven—And I’ve been making a good amount of dough.

-I usually don’t like to bake things. It’s too scientific for me generally. I like to play around. but you can’t really do that when making bread things. It’s usually a science.

-Talk about pizza dough making

Why is the Kingdom so Hidden?

Yeast permeates the whole dough.

It wasn’t thought of well in ancient Judaism. In fact, yeast/leaven had to be meticulously removed from the house before passover.

It is a picture, not necessarily of growth…but by which and whom the Kingdom will grow.

The disciples would’ve looked like yeast to “Respectable Jews”. Kind of this ragtag group of maybe-Jews (at least to the jewish leaders).

Common, uneducated fishermen and farmers, carpenters and women, tax collectors and disreputable characters—it would all seem rather distasteful. But God is like that. He takes distasteful characters and transforms them, and then transforms society through them.

Conclusion

It’s really easy for us to focus on the bad things in history. In fact, we almost exclusively look at the bad things in society.

-And we look at the church like that.

We almost disassociate ourselves from the church without realizing…we are the church.

The church did this…they did that. And yes, there are some grave sins the church has done.

But God still uses it. God still chooses to use the church.

Amidst all of the sins still created:

-Modern Universities

-Hospitals

-Orphanages

-Rehabilitation programs and care facilities

-billions of people have been kept from starvation through soup kitchens and aid work

God chooses to use regular, ordinary, seemingly invisible people to impact the world.

Why is the response to the gospel so mixed? Why does evil prevail? Why is the kingdom of Jesus so insignificant and hidden? The Lord reigns!

-Michael Green