Parables: The Growing Kingdom

Parables are stories used to illustrate or explain a concept or situation by analogy, or example

Riddles or allegory, and Jesus used the parables to separate out those who try to understand the riddle and so hear the message and warning that it brings, and those who ignore the riddle, and who refuse to hear.

Last week we looked at the Parable of the Sower, and how we are called to spread the word, and to help people be ready to receive it.

There are a couple key themes from that parable that appear in several of these other parables, and were going to look at a few of the today.

The first key theme I want to explore is the miraculous growth of the kingdom.

last week we saw this in the end of the parable of the sower, the good soil (those who hear the word, and accept it, and grow and spread the word) produces a crop 30, 60, or even 100 times that which was sown.

English Standard Version Chapter 4

But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”

In Matthew and Mark Jesus follows up the parable of the sower with a few other parables, many of which share this theme.

English Standard Version Chapter 13

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. 32 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.”

A mustard seed is tiny. its about the same size as a large grain of sand.

depending on the specific species of mustard a mustard tree can grow to be nearly 30 ft tall, and 30 ft wide. Not the largest tree, but very large considering where it came from.

The kingdom of God starts out small, but then it grows, and stretches far and wide, and people from all over will find rest in and peace in the Kingdom of God.

English Standard Version Chapter 13

33 He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”

Yeast is an interesting substance. technically speaking it is a micro-organism, that feeds on the gluten proteins in wheat, and produces gas, which helps bread dough rise, it spreads rapidly so that a little bit, (2 tsps) can work through a large amount of flour (7 cups) in only a couple hours.

I make my own bread from time to time, my favorite is pizza dough, i can make 4 large pizzas with 7 cups of flour, some water, and 2 tsps of yeast, and after 10 minutes of kneading the dough and letting it rest, the dough will double in size in less than 1 hour.

A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough in very little time, if it is mixed in properly.

the kingdom of heaven can spread like yeast, a small community of believes can work and spread and reach an entire city.

Mark includes another parable that is similar

English Standard Version Chapter 4

26 And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. 27 He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. 28 The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

This parable starts like the parable of the sower, a man scatters seed on the ground, and this one focuses on the growth of the word of God. however here, the growth is out of the hands of the farmer.

All by itself the seed grows.

It is not up to us to make the kingdom of God grow. God will bring the growth. We just need to be scattering seeds, or kneading in yeast, or planting a mustard tree. If we “plant the seeds” God will see to it that they grow.

In the Book of Corinthians, Paul talks about this very thing. Paul was one of the Church’s first ever missionaries. and he wrote many letters to churches that he planted or visited to help them understand how to follow Christ better. in Corinth, the church was divided between those that followed the teachings of Paul, and the those that followed the teachings of Apollos (another missionary) Paul responds to the church saying that such divisions are ridiculous, and in doing so he alludes to this parable of Jesus

English Standard Version Chapter 3

For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?

5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.

God alone brings the growth, we can plant the seed, via sharing and spreading the word, we can water it, by teaching and discipling each other, we can all have various roles in trying to reach the people of Oswego and the surrounding area, but in the end, God brings the growth, and God alone. it is not up to us, so long as we are faithful in sharing the Word of God and the Love of Jesus with others.

I saw a group of people yesterday in downtown. they were holding up bibles and signs saying things like “Jesus died to save sinners” and they were shouting out into the air preaching.

Their heart is in the right place, and they are trying to share the word of God, but i feel they are doing it ineffectively.

because the dozens of people that were doing this all seemed to drive separately, there were no parking spots for other people to park downtown, which meant no one was downtown at lunch time.

they were screaming trying to get people to hear them inside their cars.

because they were holding signs they looked like they were protesting something, rather than sharing the gospel.

Their heart is is the right place, but as we have been talking about, sometimes it takes more than just “spreading the word” for people to accept the word.

I hope it worked well for them yesterday, and hope that they did share the gospel with someone who needed to hear it.

It takes work to plant the seeds, and water the seeds, and cultivate the ground, and that is part of our calling, and some of us are called to different aspects of that, and if we do the work of cultivating and planting and watering then we can trust that God will bring growth.