Please turn with me to Matthew 13 - starting at verse 31.  Over the last few Sundays we’ve been looking at Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God - looking at what it means for us to live subject to the reign and the movement of the sovereign God within His universe.

We’ve been seeing Jesus speaking to this crowd - an entourage - of people following after Him for all kinds of different reasons - like a crowd at a circus looking for Jesus to perform for them - some miracle - some healing.   As Jesus is speaking - only a few in the crowd are really listening - seeking to understand - His teaching about the Kingdom of God.

So Jesus is teaching in parables - stories that touched on what was familiar to the people - stories that paralleled what He was teaching about the Kingdom - stories that didn’t have an immediate obvious meaning - stories that aroused the curiosity of some - so that they would listen to His explanation - so that Jesus could teach them the good news of the Kingdom - the reign and movement of the sovereign God in the universe - what God desires to do in and through them - and us.

Coming to Matthew 13 - starting at verse 31 - we’ve come to the third and fourth of these parables - The Mustard Seed and The Leaven.

Verse 31:  He - Jesus - presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; and this is smaller than all other seeds, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.”

The man doing the sowing is who?  Jesus.  Which Jesus did.  He was born - lived here - taught here - completed the sowing through His work on the cross.

The mustard seed represents what?  The Kingdom of God.

The field is what?  The world.

Jesus - through His ministry and work on the cross - sows the Kingdom into the world.  Are we together on this?

A mustard seed was the tiniest seed known to a first-century Palestinian - small - seemingly insignificant.  A single seed sown into the earth.  Not a whole lot can be expected.  Then something unusual happens to the seed - something supernatural.  This small seemingly insignificant seed becomes a tree - taller and larger than the other plants in the garden - branches offering shade to people below and places for birds to build their nests. 

When I was a kid we lived on an acre of land.  The front 2 thirds of the property was covered with about 40 fruit trees and lots of weeds - grassy weeds and mustard plants.  My friends and I would make interconnected tunnels and rooms and passages all over the yard - crawling through these weeds - and tying them together over our heads.  The most that these mustard plants would grow up to was about 4 feet.

We know this right?  Given all the right conditions - a mustard seed might grow-up to be a plant about 8 to 10 feet in height.  But even if it did grow that high it would still be a thin - scraggly thing.  There’s no way it would support even a bird’s nest.  Its nothing like what Jesus describes.

What Jesus is emphasizing - giving this out-of-proportion comparison - what Jesus is emphasizing is what the seed becomes.  It isn’t much to look at now.  But there’s a whole lot more to this seed than meets the eye.

Second parable - going on in verse 33:  He - Jesus - spoke another parable to them, “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened.”

The leaven represents what?  The Kingdom of God.

The woman represents who?  God.  God putting leaven into the flour through the work of Jesus Christ. 

The flour is what?  The world.

A woman takes some leaven and hides it in a large tub of flour - after time it changes all the flour so that all the flour is leavened.  There’s inherent potential in the yeast to infect the flour.

The point is the transformation of the flour - the world.  The leaven works almost imperceptibly.  But it does penetrates - it permeates - prevails upon the flour.  Just as God is at work in the world.  Some don’t see Him working.  Some refuse to see Him at work.  But, He’s still working.  His Kingdom is still moving forward.  Lives are being transformed.  A powerful transforming work that can’t be stopped.

Donald Barnhouse used to hold an open forum in his church in Philadelphia on Sunday evenings.  With just a microphone and a Bible in his hand he would answer questions from the congregation which was usually packed with students and young intellectuals as well as people from the church.

One young man stood up in the balcony and said, “I’d like to know how those children of Israel could walk around the wilderness for forty years and their shoes never wear out and their clothes never wear out.”  Barnhouse looked at him, blinked a time or two, and he said, “God!”  The guy up there said, “Oh, now I understand,” and sat down.  Barnhouse said, “No, you don’t, son.  Nobody understands.” (1)

We need to be really careful here and not fall into the trap of reading the familiar and thinking we understand the depth of what Jesus is saying to us.

Last Sunday we looked at The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. (Matthew 13:24-30,36-43)  Between sharing the parable of the wheat and the weeds and sharing with His disciples the explanation of what that parable means - Jesus shares these other two parables - the mustard seed and the leaven.  That placement is not a coincidence.

Jesus spoke of weeds being planted in a field - the world - right next to the wheat - God’s people.  Weeds - those who are under the control of Satan - working against God and His people.  Until Jesus returns there will always be weeds growing alongside the wheat.  Remember this?

His point being:  Our responsibility is not to try to remove the weeds.  But to see the value of being wheat.  Right where God has sown us.

Sometimes we can’t see the field for the weeds.  We feel like the weeds are prevailing - the field is being overcome - that we’ll ever amount to anything useful is a fading dream.  Do you ever feel like that?  How are we suppose to be growing - thriving - wheat plants in God’s garden?

The mustard seed and the leaven point us in the direction of how that happens.  How we thrive where God sows us.

There are two thoughts of application I’d like to share.  First is this:  There is more here than meets the eye.  Try that with me, “There is more here than meets the eye.”

I’d like to read something to you from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.  I really appreciate Disney coming out with their film as a way of promoting our sermon series.  You’ll notice the graphic on the Sermon Notes was used by Disney to design their wardrobe.

Looking into the inside, she saw several coats hanging up - mostly long fur coats.  There was nothing Lucy like so much as the smell and feel of fur.  She immediately stepped into the wardrobe and got in among the coats and rubbed her face against them, leaving the door open, of course, because she knew that it is very foolish to shut oneself into any wardrobe.  Soon she went further in and found that there was a second row of coats hanging up behind the first one.  It was almost quite dark in there and she kept her arms stretched out in front of her so as to not bump her face into the back of the wardrobe.  She took a step further in - then two or three steps - always expecting to feel woodwork against the tips of her fingers.  But she could not feel it.

“This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!” thought Lucy, going still further in and pushing the soft folds of coats aside to make room for her.  Then she noticed that there was something crunching under her feet.  “I wonder is that more moth-balls?” she thought, stooping down to feel it with her hand.  But instead of feeling the hard, smooth wood of the floor of the wardrobe, she felt something soft and powdery and extremely cold.  “This is very queer,” she said, and went on a step or two further.

Next moment she found that what was rubbing against her face and hands was no longer soft fur but something hard and rough and even prickly.  “Why, it is just like branches of trees!” exclaimed Lucy.  And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her; not a few inches away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have been, but a long way off.  Something cold and soft was falling on her.  A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air. (2)   

Satan - our enemy - fears that we will understand this.  The Kingdom of God is a whole lot larger than we can possibly get our minds around.

Satan would love to have us see the coats and turn back.  To never push ahead to what God has for us.  To never even go into the wardrobe.  To live in fear and despair and doubt - in his clutches and under his control.  He fears that you will ever understand that the sovereign almighty creator God has brought to you and enabled you to be a part of His timeless - universal - transcendent - all conquering - victorious Kingdom.

Today, we can look backwards through almost 2,000 years of Church history and tradition - backwards at the spread of Christianity over the earth - the dominance of Christianity in the west - centuries of theological debate and study - all the religious knowledge we have today.  It would be so easy for us to focus on the outward activity of the Christian religion and think that - 2,000 years ago - that’s what Jesus was pointing towards.  That somehow the spread of Christianity means that God’s Kingdom is growing.

If a lot of people show up on a Sunday morning then it was a good service.  Sunday School is great when the class is full.  If the budget is met - if the building is paid for - that’s success - that’s the Kingdom of God growing.  We’re easily impressed - bought off by Satan - with size and influence and power.

That’s what people were looking for 2,000 years ago.  A kingdom commencing with pomp and circumstance - a massive display of divine power.  A visible and powerful kingdom in Palestine that would kick the Romans back to Rome.  Size - influence - power.

But Jesus is talking about a small seed - slow growth - and the future potential of what that seed will become.  Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is not all this external religion - the rules - the regulations - the traditions.

The Kingdom of God is people - people of faith - who have a relationship with Jesus Christ - who step forward when He calls to them.  The Kingdom of God is about the work of the sovereign God in and through the lives of His people.  That’s the miraculous growth and development that attracts birds to the branches.

Jacob - running from home after he tricked Isaac into giving him the blessing that was really Esau’s - remember this?  He’s been kicked out of his house.  He’s living in fear.  His future is uncertain.  He’s fleeing - between Beersheba and Haran and he stops for the night.

Jacob falls into a dream.  He sees a ladder “set on the earth with its top reaching to heaven...the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.”  God speaks to Jacob - He says, “I am the God of you father Abraham and the God of Isaac.  The land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants… Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.”

When Jacob wakes up he says this, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.  This is the house of God...the gate of heaven.”  There is more going on here than meets the eye.  God is much bigger.  The kingdom is much greater.  (Genesis 28:10-22)  Jacob gets up and with confidence follows God into His future.

Hebrews 11:1:  “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not - what?  seen.”

Faith acts upon - not what is seen - but upon what is.  Faith envisions the future reality of what will happen as if it already has.  Try that with me, “Faith envisions the future reality of what will happen as if it already has.”  God’s Kingdom has.  Victory is certain.  Sovereignty is a given.  It already is.

We look at ourselves.  Who am I?  Look at our lives - our hang ups - our struggles - our past - our inadequacies.  Ahead we see only continuing futility and looming disaster.

How are we - the Evangelical Free Church of Merced suppose to reach this city - with all its issues and problems?  How are we suppose to have an impact in people’s lives?  We want to pray and work that people will come to trust in Jesus as their Savior.  Yet, often when we speak out in faith - we experience resistance - ridicule - indifference.  Its hard to follow Jesus.  When we compare ourselves to other churches - our facilities - our worship - our ministries - our location.  Who are we compared to them?

Our struggle is that we too often focus on the seed - small and alone in the world - and forget to visualize the awesomeness of the tree - the spread of the branches - the extent and scope of the Kingdom we’re a part of.  God is here!  God is at work!  The field is His.  His Kingdom is the reality we live in.  We are part of something really really big.  Trust God.  Focus on Him.  Keep following Him.  Move forward.

Second thought of application:  With God there is always potential.  Try that together, “With God there is always potential.”

Last week the Dow crossed the 11,000 mark for the first time since June 7, 2001.  Also last week - USA TODAY published its annual mutual fund report.  There was one Latin America fund that - over the last 5 years - returned 163%. (3)  That’s impressive.  These days there’s great potential on Wall Street.

There’s a story - maybe you’ve heard this one - about a man who was walking on the beach and found a used magic lamp washed up on the shore.  When he rubbed it this genie came out and told him that the lamp contained only one remaining wish.  The man thought about that for a minute and then requested a copy of the stock page from the local newspaper dated exactly one year later.  In a puff of smoke, the genie was gone, and in his place was the stock page.

Gleefully, the man sat down to peruse his trophy.  He could invest with certainty - knowing the winners one year in advance.  As the paper fell to his lap it turned over to the obituary column on the reverse side of the page - and the name at the top of the listing caught the man’s attention.  It was his. (4)  Have you heard that?

The Bible speaks of leaven in two ways.  Jesus probably has both in mind here.  First, leaven is often symbolic of sin - people and actions that are disobedient to the will of God.  Second, leaven is yeast - its the ingredient that makes dough rise - expand.  Which is a good thing.  Both ways - the bottom line is the potential for leaven to transform - to bring change.

Our actions are like leaven - they’re infectious - they influence others - either for evil or for good.  We may not think that what we do is really all that important.  But, according to Jesus, it is.

Especially in the greater Merced metroplex.  People know us.  They notice how we live.  The words that we say to our brothers and sisters in Christ - or what we say about each other - what we say about God’s ministry - the words we speak when we’re not a church - people hear.  Our commitment to worship and obey God - the priority He has in our lives.  People watch how we live our lives.

That really takes this teaching of Jesus up a notch.  Its an Emerill moment - BAM!

At its most basic level the Kingdom of God is the work of God in us - the reign of Jesus as Lord over our lives - the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts - the potential of what God can do in us and through us.  The Kingdom of God is not about theology and doctrine.  Its about each of us being permeated - transformed - half-baked people becoming the whole persons that God intends for us to be.  That’s the difference between living like a Christian and living as a Christian.

Live like a Christian and you’re living by an outward set of religious expectations.  When we live like a Christian we miss the truth of what the Kingdom is and God’s potential for us - we miss out on knowing who we really are.  We’ll lack confidence in Jesus.  We’ll pray without expectation of answers. We’ll just go on muddling along trying to live Godly lives without God’s power at work within us.  God and Christianity ultimately degrade into a set of morals and a faith tradition.

People are fed up with that.  Why shouldn’t they be?  How attractive is it - how transforming and exciting to join up with - to nest in the branches with a bunch of people going through the motions of playing church.  Where’s the potential in that?

Living as a Christian engages life at its deepest level and opens us up to life’s greatest potential.  The Kingdom is what each of us desires to be a part of - where we long to be.  Where all of what God is doing in creation - where all of what He is doing in us - comes together.

If everything that we are is given to God - trusting Him - living in obedience to Him - if He really is at work within us - we can be leaven that brings people closer to God - that attracts people to His ministry here.  If we allow God to work in us and through us then He will use us to bring about the full potential of the Kingdom of God - right here - right now - permeating and transforming the lives of others.

Let me encourage you to do something.  Next time you have a seed in your hand.  Take a look at it and try to visualize the plant.  Try to think about yourself that way.  Not a small seed.  But a person of Kingdom potential.  The congregation here - not just a hundred or so people in a room - but a branch of God’s universal Kingdom - full of potential.

What Jesus teaches here is so encouraging for us.  Stop looking at the weeds.  Look at the Kingdom.  See the potential.  Focus on God.  Open your heart to Him.

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