Mustard Seeds

This is one of the sermons that I didn’t really want to preach.

I’ve known that I was going to preach this sermon for about a week and-a-half, and I’ve prepared all of the other sermons that I’m supposed to preach for this, but this sermon has been one that I’ve fought against doing.

I kept trying to find different parables to do, but it always led back to this one.

So, if this sermon sucks, it’s just because I didn’t do enough and I had bad pizza and couldn’t get the sermon out of my head.

If it doesn’t suck, it’s because God’s been working on my heart to talk about stuff that I have problems dealing with.

Matthew 13:31-33.

For those of you that have grown up in church, you probably know, but a mustard seed is stupid small. It’s .06” big, it’s almost microscopic!

However, when it’s fully grown, it makes a low covered tree (not super tall), but it get’s 20-30 feet wide. It’s so big that huge numbers of birds end up living in mustard trees because of how much shade and the number of branches it has.

The Kingdom of God is like…

Jesus tells says that phrase all the time,

All throughout His ministry, He would say “the Kingdom of God is like…” and then tell a parable.

Jesus, throughout His ministry, was introducing us to a new way of living, living in the Kingdom of God.

No one had any real idea as to what that looked like before Jesus showed up. We didn’t have any frame of reference for what it looked like to live in the life that God created for us because sin was so present in our lives. So, Jesus tells us stories to explain what this new God-life is supposed to look like.

What He describes is super interesting; He says it’s like a mustard seed.

WHAT IN THE WORLD DOES THAT MEAN?

What are we supposed to do with the Kingdom of God being like a mustard seed?

That it’s small?

That it makes a delicious condiment?

I think He’s actually talking about the nature of the Kingdom of God when He’s talking about this.

The Kingdom of God isn’t big and flashy.

We don’t have flags and anthems and armies, because all of those things have men behind them who need to control power. All of those systems, all of our governments and societies, have so much structure in them because they were built by humans, who are very broken people.

The Kingdom of God is built by God for the flourishing of all creation, and so it’s a community of love that changes the fabric of reality because God is at the head of it.

But what does that do for us?

Yeah, we know that we’re in this community and that’s cool and all, but what does that do?

It actually reminds my of another quote that Jesus had in Matthew 17:20-21.

He’s talking about why His disciples weren’t able to cast out a demon, and then Jesus explains why.

Mustard Seed Faith

If they had faith like a mustard seed, then things could have been different.

Once again, that’s not very much faith! They didn’t need to have that much faith, they needed a mustard seed sized faith!

But this leads to the question: Do I have a faith like that?

The disciples followed Jesus to the point that many of them were killed because of their faith. That’s pretty intense!

Do I have a faith like that? And why would Jesus say that they needed a mustard seed faith??

I can’t answer for you what your faith is, but I can tell you this:

Mustard seeds are small, but have amazing potential

The thing that’s fascinating about a mustard seed is that it’s so small, but it grows SO big. The trees get massive, all from the smallest little seed!

So, it’s not that you need to have this amazing faith and relationship with God from the start, it’s that you need to have a little bit of true faith and let it grow.

Don’t just smash it down or try to figure things out on your own, really believe in this stuff!

Your faith doesn’t need to be massive for you to be a follower of Jesus; it needs to be real.

Play dough cookies

A child makes play dough cookies and will hand it to you to “eat it” and then you’re supposed to fake it and pretend like you love it.

If you at the cookie for real, even the kid would be disgusted with you!

Because they know, even at a young age, that’s not the real thing!

The real thing is soft and gooey and delicious, this is a soft piece of gross salty mush (which is sometimes what my cookies turn out to be)

We do the same thing with our faith.

We want so badly to have this massive faith, but we hide behind ourselves and our own abilities and push God to the side.

Maybe it’s always being in control, or trying to figure out your own life to make yourself good enough, or just hiding behind a mask because you’d never want anyone to see the real you, but we all do it!

We all push God to the side and give Him our play dough cookie lives and then we get sad when He doesn’t eat them, but we would never expect Him to!

It’s like with prayer.

We all have hopefully prayed before, but some of my prayers are weak!

When I go into a hospital, I pray that God would heal people, but I hide behind my words!

I’ve seen miracles happen, I know they’re real, but I don’t actually believe them if I’m not actually praying for them!

Those are play-dough prayers!

We need to start praying with the boldness that comes from faith! The courage that comes from knowing that God is on our side and that He’s with us and that He wants us close to Him!

He’s the God of the universe who died for our sins, I think that He can take care of a little bit more of our brokenness, if we’d just let Him!

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of giving God play-dough cookies.

If the Kingdom of God and my faith is like a mustard seed, then I should be praying boldly and living boldly and trusting in God boldly.

So, let’s start talking to God like it’s real, because it is.

Instead of giving play-dough cookies, let’s take our very souls to God in prayer and in life and offer them up as a sacrifice to Him and see what He does with that.

Let’s give everything that we have to God and see what He does with it, because He’s given me an amazing life with play-dough, I can’t wait to see what He’s going to do with something real.

During small groups, let’s make something real. Let’s talk honestly about ourselves and our hopes and our dreams and our difficulties and our brokenness and where we need God. Let’s stop pretending Christianity and start living it.