Little Things & Big Impacts

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Mission SD 2021—Sign-up

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Lord, here we go again!

Pray.

Think myself empty.

Read myself full.

Write myself clear.

Pray myself haught.

Be myself.

Forget myself.

Lord, let this message be a beacon for you. Let me be forgotten and invisible. Let them see and know you, only you. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Psalm 19:14

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The gospel is the good news that God, the loving Creator, sovereign King, and holy Judge of all, has looked upon men and women wonderfully and uniquely made in His image who have rebelled against Him, are separated from Him, and deserve death before Him, and He has sent His Son, Jesus, God in the flesh, the long-awaited King, to live a perfect and powerful life, to die a sacrificial and substitutionary death, and to rise from the grave in victory over sin, Satan, and death. The gospel is a summons from God for all people in all nations to repent and believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, turning from all idols to declare allegiance to Jesus alone as King and trust in Jesus alone as Lord. All who turn from Jesus will experience everlasting, horrifying suffering in hell, while all who trust in Jesus will experience everlasting, satisfying communion with God in heaven. (Secret Church 2020, David Platt, Radical.net)

For now, Jesus remains in heaven, changing the world one person at a time, but one day he will return and judge the world in righteousness. He will remove from this world all sin and all causes of sin and he will restore the cosmos to a state of peace, prosperity and flourishing and all those who have received him as their Lord and Savior will participate in his rule and enjoy his goodness forever.

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PRAY

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EACH WEEK:

What is something that is small that has a huge impact?

-Bomb

-Bullet/slingshot

-Nuclear explosion- The Uranium Atoms that split in the Hiroshima nuclear bomb. I think it was called "Little Boy".

APOLLO 11

Buzz Aldrin wasn't the first to McGuyver a solution to a difficult problem, but his use of a felt-tip pen to activate a broken circuit breaker to enable the Eagle to blast off from the moon surely ranks as one of the most dramatic.

As recounted in his book Magnificent Desolation , Aldrin and his moon-walking companion Neil Armstrong were gathering themselves into the landing module to start the return home when he noticed something lying on the floor. It was a circuit breaker switch that had gotten bumped and had broken off in all the too-ing and fro-ing in the cramped environment.

As luck would have it, this wasn't just any old switch: it was the switch to the circuit breaker that activated the ascent engine that would lift them off the moon to rendezvous with Mike Collins, who was orbiting overhead in the Columbia. If they couldn't get that breaker pushed back in, they'd have to figure something else out, or there'd be no ascent.

They told mission control and then tried unsuccessfully to catch some sleep. The next morning, no solution was forthcoming so as Aldrin relates in his book:

“Since it was electrical, I decided not to put my finger in, or use anything that had metal on the end. I had a felt-tipped pen in the shoulder pocket of my suit that might do the job. After moving the countdown procedure up by a couple of hours in case it didn't work, I inserted the pen into the small opening where the circuit breaker switch should have been, and pushed it in; sure enough, the circuit breaker held. We were going to get off the moon, after all.”

Mike Collins donated his own felt pen to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum which he helped found.

Aldrin held on to his&#151and keeps it with the broken breaker switch.

SO what’s a parable?

A parable is a simple story that explains a spiritual truth.

The ESV Literary Study Bible Collected Parables (Chapter 13)

the parables of the kingdom assert the supreme value of entering God’s kingdom (which is a metaphor for believing in God and submitting to his royal authority)

Why does Jesus speak in parables?

Mark 4:30 ESV

30 And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it?

Grab your Bible.

Matthew 13:31–34 ESV

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.” 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.” 34 All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables; indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable.

Jesus is talking to the DISCIPLES.

It is addressed to the disciples, people who have already discovered the kingdom.

Charles H Spurgeon Oct 20, 1889

The parable may be understood to relate to our Lord himself, who is the living seed. You know also how his church is the tree that springs from him, and how greatly it grows and spreads its branches until it covers the earth. From the one man Christ Jesus, despised and rejected of men, slain and buried, and so hidden away from among men— from him, I say, there ariseth a multitude which no man can number. These spread themselves, like some tree which grows by the rivers of waters, and they yielded both gracious shelter and spiritual food. I called it a great little parable, and so it is: it has a world of teaching within the smallest compass. The parable is itself like a grain of mustard seed, but its meanings are as a great tree.

We see that Jesus used the introductory formula "The kingdom of heaven is like…” he is not saying the kingdom is like a mustard seed physically. The comparison is between what the kingdom of God will finally appear as and what a mustard seed finally becomes after it has been planted. In the Mediterranean world, the mustard seed was thought to be the smallest of all the seeds. It is only about .075 inches in diameter. Yet, when it is planted in can grow into a herb that measures anywhere from 6 to 12 feet high (and on some occasions even as high as 15 feet!).

What are the main symbols?

The Mustard Seed

Like the kingdom of heaven (or kingdom of God), what does the mustard seed do? How is it a benefit and what is its behavior like (Mark 4:31–32)?

John D. Barry, Parables: Portraits of God’s Kingdom in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Not Your Average Bible Study (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press; Bible Study Magazine, 2018), 26.

The next two parables in ch. 13 stress the inevitable growth of the kingdom of heaven, despite the resistance it faces. The parable of the mustard seed contrasts the seemingly insignificant inception of the kingdom of heaven, in the world and in a person’s life, with its momentous results.

John D. Barry et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Mt 13:31–33.

A tiny seed that grows into a 10-foot-high shrub. The shrub grew along the shores of the Sea of Galilee and may have been immediately in view of Jesus’ hearers.

John D. Barry et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Mt 13:31.

Refers to seeds planted by farmers in Galilee. Rabbis used the mustard seed as a proverbial object to denote the smallest possible amount or size of something.

John D. Barry et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Mt 13:32.

The Stories of the Kingdom: A Study of the Parables of Jesus Helps to Meditation or Discussion (The Story of a Grain of Mustard-Seed)

A Chinese Christian clergyman preaching on this parable made two points; they touch the centre of the teaching:

(1) Men don’t have to weed and hoe mustard; it has power in itself to grow in spite of all obstacles.

(2) Once get mustard into a field and it is practically impossible to get it out again.

* What is the vital element of Christianity?

Note that the seed is the highest product of the plant, for which the fruit is merely a casing. The seed determines the character of all that springs from it.

* What did Christ plant that no one else has planted?

* A certain Missionary Society recorded the ordination of its first Burmese native minister. Years before they had established a Leper Hospital, and in connection with it a children’s home in which the babies of leper mothers could be brought up away from the risk of contagion and here he had been reared. Do you consider this parable and its predecessor would enable you to form a defence of such an expenditure of missionary income against an objector who considers that it should be used for “preaching the Gospel to the heathen”?

* Is growth always outward and visible?

* The Jews expected the coming of a Messiah; they failed to recognize Jesus. What is wrong when the apparent insignificance of Christianity, or of Christians, is a stumbling-block?

Do not measure the importance of things by their size but by their vitality.

The Yeast

Secondary symbols are the sower and the woman

A substance that causes dough to ferment and rise. Normally, yeast or leaven has negative connotations in the Bible, symbolizing sin or impurity (e.g., 16:6; 1 Cor 5:6–7). Here, Jesus uses it positively to symbolize the kingdom of heaven’s expansion.

three measures Approximately 50 pounds—enough to feed about 150 people. Basically invisible when combined with flour, the leaven would become apparent as the dough baked and expanded into a great quantity.

John D. Barry et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Mt 13:33.

1. Look at Mark's version of this parable in Mark 4:30-32. What is different between Mark's description of what the mustard seed grows up into and Matthew's version?

a. Mark's version says that the seed grows up into a shrub while Matthew's version says it grows up into a tree. Explain to the learners that Matthew (and Luke) are probably describing the plant as a "tree" because of the Old Testament imagery of an eschatological tree (a tree symbolizing events that occur in connection with God's activity in the world). Among later Jewish exegetes, passages such as Ezekiel 17:22-24; 31:6 and Daniel 4:12 that speak of a tree where the birds of the air nest, were interpreted to mean that in the future Gentiles would repent of their sins and come to worship Israel's God. Since only Matthew and Luke refer to a "tree", some commentators argue that early Christians exchanged Jesus' original "shrub" into a tree so as to make it symbolize and justify the church's evangelization of Gentiles.

Now have someone read Matthew 13:33. This parable (again, similitude) can be found also in Luke 13:20, 21. Draw the learners' attention to fact that for such a small parable there are several unusual features within it.

· While it is true that the kingdom of God is not compared directly to leaven, it is compared with what happens when leaven is mixed in dough. This is unusual because God's kingdom is a positive image while leaven was used as a negative metaphor for that which corrupts (Matthew 16:6 and parallels, Luke 12:1; 1 Cor. 5:6-8; and Gal. 5:9). While in literature that dates after the New Testament leaven was used as a positive symbol, there is no example of such a use that predates Jesus.

· Not only is the kingdom compared to what happens with leaven but the woman is probably symbolic of God. Like a woman who uses leaven to spread into the dough, so God uses the kingdom to act in a similar fashion. We are used to thinking conceptually about God as "Father". This is one of the few instances where God is compared to a female. · The parable says that the woman "hid" the leaven in the dough. This is probably not coincidental. While it is pressing the detail too far to say, as some exegetes do, that the woman is up to something sinister, the hidden leaven probably symbolizes the hidden power of God's kingdom in the ministry of Jesus. In the parable of the Mustard Seed, the seed is also "hidden" in the ground through the process of sowing it, but that point is less emphasized.

· The woman hides the leaven into an unrealistic amount of flour for one common woman to deal with for routine needs. While the NIV says "large amount", some translations will have "three measure" (RSV, NRSV). A "measure" (the Greek word used is saton) is equivalent to 36 liters or 144 cups. The woman used 432 cups of flour to make her bread! That's a large quantity of bread. Jesus is making the point that just as it seems unlikely that something as small as leaven has the power to produce such a huge quantity of bread, so it is not obvious that the power of God's kingdom, though it appears insignificant in numbers and power, will in the end appear as something enormous.

Like the mustard seed, the kingdom of heaven began as something small and seemingly insignificant but later grew to be large. The mustard seed was the smallest of all the seeds commonly planted in Palestine at that time.

13:33 The image of a pinch of leaven permeating fifty pounds of dough parallels the great impact the kingdom would have despite its small beginnings.

Robert H. Stein, “Differences in the Gospels,” in CSB Study Bible: Notes, ed. Edwin A. Blum and Trevin Wax (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), 1523.

What main lessons do both parables convey?

When the kingdom of God is finally revealed, it will be significantly larger than what we see of it now. It may be necessary to stress to the learners that this is not so much a "parable of growth" as a "parable of contrasts". Jesus is not saying that the visible church will gradually grow until the end. All he is illustrating is that the size of the future kingdom is proportionately larger in contrast to what that kingdom looks like in the present world. The kingdom of God, though it cannot be seen, is an unstoppable force that God's power has initiated. It works through Jesus' ministry and will transform God's creation into something better.

These parables focus not on application now but what is to come. They are primarily designed to reveal information about how God's kingdom will finally appear. Both parables appear to be directed toward those who might be asking Jesus how the kingdom of God can be associated with his ministry. The kingdom is power and glory, but Jesus is a poor, itinerant, and unassuming prophet.

Jesus gives two answers. First, "Despite the fact that you cannot see evidence of this kingdom in my ministry, I am planting the seed for that kingdom that will one day will be so large that will be a home for numerous people." Second, "The reason that you cannot see evidence of this kingdom in my ministry is because God has intentionally hidden the kingdom within it. But be warned, it cannot be stopped from producing what God has created it to produce."

—Are you discouraged in your walk or in your ministry? Here’s some encouragement.

a. The parable of the mustard seed should remind you that your ministry is significant not because of its own size or strength. It is significant because it is representative of God's large and glorious domain that will be revealed in the end. The parable of the leaven could remind them that their ministry is significant because it belongs to something larger that cannot fail but will transform the world.

—If your a non-Christian arguing that they see nothing in churches today that would make them want to be apart of them, how might you be able to respond in light of what you know from these two parables?

a. These parables point to the truth that God will bring forth from what is not now glorious or powerful a people who will ultimately prevail over everything.

How does this fit in with the gospel message?

You are part of this kingdom.

Impact of ONE