Summary 

Growth in the Kingdom of God is a mystery. It seems at once both so entirely connected to us and what we do with what we have heard and at the same time utterly the work of God. Sometimes it seems as though we see it and sometimes it is elusive for years and years. Even so, the Kingdom is like a little mustard seed. Small, seemingly insignificant and Jesus tells us that it will grow beyond our wildest dreams!

Transcript

We are in Mark 4 and the entirety of the chapter speaks to the power of God’s words but also the great need to hear. So, last week, we heard the parable of the sower that went out and sower his seed on various soils. Some of which bore no fruit at all and the good soil which bore far more than anyone would have every imagines. But we also heard the explanation not just of that parable, but of parables, how they hide and how they are for those who have ears to hear and hearts to ask questions and lives the pursue of the Kingdom. Parables reveal hearts. 

Today we are actually taking on a number of other parables related to hearing and to action and growth and ultimately related to the Kingdom of God and its surprising effect. 

As I was preparing this sermon, I listened to a sermon from my pastor growing up [Rob Rayburn, “The Growth of the Kingdom of God]. In it, he gave as an illustration a bit of history of a hymn by the American Presbyterian William Pierson Merrill titled Rise Up, O men of God.  When I was in college at Wester Washington University I lived in a house with ten other guys, some of whom were involved in campus ministries and others were involved helping lead local Young Life groups. As a whole, our house enjoyed brewing beer. In fact, two of the guys now own their own breweries and one of them has one international awards. Anyway, Young Life’s policy did not allow beer in the house (even if you were of age - and this was my last year in college), so we brewed beer and stored it in the garage. Anyway, while the beer was brewing we sang various songs. One of them was Psalm 68 because it would take us an entire 12 minutes to sing it through, but occasionally we would sing this hymn “Rise Up, O Men of God”! by William Merrill. 

Rise up, O men of God!
His kingdom tarries long;
Bring in the day of brotherhood,
And end the night of wrong.

We found that inspiring. We could bring in the day of brotherhood and end the night of wrong. Interestingly, I learned my former pastor that Merrill was a liberal Presbyterian and an advocate of what he called “world brotherhood.” That was the name of a movement in the liberal wing of the early 20th c, Presbyterian church. The thought of the hymn was that it was high time for Christian men to take matters into their own hands and bring in the kingdom of God, by which Merrill meant the day of peace and justice. And they could do it.

Rise up, O men of God!
The Church for you doth wait,
Her strength unequal to her task;
Rise up and make her great.

The British hymn scholar Erik Routley says this is “The genius of American protestantism that this author should write of men making the church great; Elnglishmen (he goes on to say) have come to prefer 

Her strength shall make your spirit strong;
Her service make you great,

We Americans don’t like the idea that we cannot make something happen.

But Jesus did just invite us to have ears, to come and to sit with him and to have questions for him, that we might be those who bear fruit in the Kingdom of God. 

So, this morning I think our texts together are getting at the great mystery of the working of the Kingdom of God but also its surprising outcome. 

Here’s the mystery: You get out what you put in and yet it is all up to God.

Let’s break that down.

You Get in what you put out.

Alright, two parts to this.
Look down with me at verse 21-23: 

²¹ And he said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand? ²² For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light. ²³ If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Now, we know that lamps are meant to bring light. Maybe in our day we think very little of leaving the lights on in our house, but you must remember that the oil that fed the lamp was not something easy to acquire. You would never light a lamp and then cover it up or put it under a bed. Never, it would be absurd. You would place it on a stand that it might do what it is made to do, to bring light. 

The word is meant to be heard, the seed is meant to be received by good soil and to bear fruit, and lamps are made to give light. 

So, what do you do with what you have received. What do you do with the words of the Kingdom of God? Do you come back to the sower and say “Explain it to me that I might bear fruit!” Give me your light that I might make the world a brighter place!”

Do you rise up? Do you seek to end the night of wrong? Do you bear the fruits of the Kingdom of God? Do you shine the light of the Kingdom of God? 

Jesus goes on ²⁴ And he said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. ²⁵ For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

Sounds harsh, maybe initially at least, but the meaning isn’t that hard to get. You get out what you put in and if you don’t really care for what you have been given it’ll be taken from you. 

Think about another parable that Jesus taught, the parable of the talents. Jesus tells the story in Matthew 25 about a man who was leaving on a trip and left some of his money with his servants. One he left 5, one 2 and one 1 talent. The one who had 5 traded them and when his master came back he had 10 talents. the one who was given 2 traded them and when his master came back he had 4 talents. Both of these servants were rewarded greatly. But the servant who was given 1 talent buried it in the ground out of fear. And the master came back and said “You wicked and slothful servant! Why didn’t you at least invest it in the bank and get some interest!” And he took what he had given to that servant and gave it to the man who had 10. 

That is what Jesus is saying here. If you take the words of God and you do nothing with it why do you expect fruit in your life? Actually, let me change this, if you take the good fortune of having Christian parents who prayed with you and taught you the word and then shunned that, or it you took the encouragement of the saints that is offer to you in small groups and in joining ministry teams here at this church and you did nothing with those opportunities, y’all, why would you think that you are growing in reflecting the beauty of Christ and bearing the fruits of the Holy Spirit in your life? Or, think of the proverb that was our offertory verse recently, “One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.” Proverbs 11:24 Why do we think that we can withhold from God that we he has given us and it will be fine for us? 

Words are meant to be heard, seeds are meant to bear fruit, lamps are meant to bring light. Pay attention then to what you hear!

The first part of the mystery. You get out what you put in. 

But that’s not too much of a mystery yet.

The second part is that it is all of God. 

Verse 26  

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.”

So again, the Kingdom of God and seed. But here we find another good lesson on how parables work. Often the meaning of a parable is in the place it seems odd. Lamps are meant for light! Here we should scratch out heads and the passiveness of the farmer. Last week I mentioned that in the ancient world they would typically till up the land after the seed had been sown over the land. Well, here there is none of that. None at all. In fact, it just says “He sleeps and rises night and day.” He just lets time pass. 

What about all of the “You get out what you put in” stuff?! Where is that? Here the man comes in at the end and has ripe grain and he puts his sickle to it and he has a harvest, but it seems as though he has done nothing!

And here is the counter truth to the first one: We don’t really know how the fruit of the Kingdom is born. It is all of God and his timing. Really, truly, some of you, I might say all of you who have been following Jesus for a good while, know the experience of seeming to not grow at all in your faith. And it is not that you are neglecting the word or that you come to worship only when it fits your busy schedule or that you could care less about fellowship with other Christians. No, you are here this morning or you are listening attentively online right now. You aren’t spurning God’s work. You hear Jesus call to love your enemies and to do good to those who harm you, you have heard a hundred times over the blessed are the meek and those who mourn and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and who are merciful and who are pure in heart and who are peacemakers. you have heard all of that time and again yet not only do you not seem to receive comfort and mercy and all of the rest that is promised in the beatitudes, but instead you seem to follow along with our current world in your growing hatred of your enemies. You seem to grow more and more in the belief that it is better to hoard that to give, even though our Lord tells us the exact opposite. Hoard our hearts and our energy and our time and our talents and our money and our minds. Hoard it all. So little fruit and yet it is not because you have buried your talents. 

How strange is it? How strange is the growth of the Kingdom of God? Sometimes it seems to small it is truly imperceptible and then just as truly at other times it seems as though we have gone to sleep one day one kind of person and woke up the next another kind of person. But also think, I bet many of you know folk that have thrown in the towel on Christianity because they have seen so little fruit in their lives. I bet you know others who have no desire at all to consider the Christian faith because they know people who for years have faithfully attended church services and read the Bible and yet they see no fruit in the lives of those people. 

On the other side, I bet some of you have had the joy of others looking at your life and telling you “You are different than you used to be! You are more loving, more merciful, more patient, kinder, gentler, more self-controlled. You are slower to anger. You care more and more for those who you disagree with. I could see you dying for you enemy like Jesus did for you!”

It is a great great mystery. Growth in the Kingdom of God is a great mystery. 

Now, we need to move on to the other important thing these verses are telling us, but I’d like to invite you today to talk to someone else, maybe you roommate, maybe somebody downstairs when you are grabbing cookies and coffee, maybe you husband or your wife. Talk to someone about where you tend to fall on these two truths: Do you fall toward what might make us super active (you get out what you put in!) or maybe what might make us more passive (It is all a divine mystery). Where do you fall? Please, have that conversation. 

Ok, the last thing Jesus is saying here is that despite the mysterious working of the seeds of the Kingdom of God, there outcome is surprising glorious

The Surpassing outcome of the Kingdom

Verse 30. He said “With what shall we compare the Kingdom of God?” Let’s just stop for a moment. Then, just as now, they would have wanted a more powerful image. I mean, maybe he paused after this question and heard their cries “How about crowns, Jesus? How about swords, Jesus? How about faith, family and flag, Jesus?” No, instead he is back to seeds. “It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, ³² yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” 

Seeds again. And not just any seed, but the smallest seed that the people in his day would have been accustomed to seeing. There are about 240,000 mustard seeds in a pound. It’s small. I have a jar in my office that I have had since I moved here that has a single mustard seed in it. I can’t see it unless I pick up the jar and really look for it. 

And that’s so often how the words of the Kingdom of God are. Little tiny seeds sown. Little conversation about our inclination to action or passivity. Little decisions to no longer let twitter have a loud voice in your ear. Little acts like changing diapers and bringing cookies over to the new neighbor. Little acts like playing legos at Third in the Burg. Little acts like showing up week in and week out month in and month out desiring to hear and heed the word of God. 

And a tree takes root and begins to grow. 

I don’t know if some of you have seen mustard plants. There are different varieties. Some of them are like ground cover, they just grow maybe a couple feet tall. Some of them are like bushes. Then some, and the most common that were grown around the Sea of Galilee where Jesus was teaching this parable was the black mustard. Would typically grow to around 4 to 6 feet, but when cultivated it could grow to 12 even up 15 feet. So it could get fairly large. The image Jesus is using would have been something they were familiar with, but no one would think that the birds of the air would make their nests in a mustard seed. it was too scraggly, too unruly, too messy. That would have to be a mustard tree like no one would have ever seen or heard of!

I imagine that most of you have a sense of the story of Christianity. I would think that there are quite a few of you here that aren’t Christians. You may just be checking this out. I’m glad for that. But I bet even you know broadly the story of Christianity. 

Let me give you a brief synopsis. The night Jesus died even his closest friends ran away from him and one of his closest denied him three times (that guy’s name was Peter). After Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared to eleven of his disciples and a few women (because one [Judas] had betrayed him and ended up committing suicide). After he ascended to heaven there were about 120 who waited for the Spirit and then began to preach. After the first Pentecost, there were around 3000 followers. At the end of the book of Acts, which at its latest is thirty-five or forty years after Jesus death, the gospel had spread around the Mediterranean. And by the end of the fourth century half of the Roman world would have self-identified as Christians, despite being persecuted for the majority of those first few centuries. 

Let me tell you a more modern story. 

In 1895 a missionary, Peter Cameron Scott, along with 15 others landed in Mount Battery, Kenya. A year later he died and at that time wrote that the people “have hazy ideas about God.” In 1898 all but one of the original missionaries were either dead or had returned to Scotland. Weak, unimpressive, insignificant. In 1995, 25,000 Kenyans gathered together in Nairobi to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the organization that Peter Cameron Scott founded, the African Inland Mission. They sang, “To God be the glory, great things he has done.” At that time, the African Inland Mission had in Kenya alone one million members. 

Friends, I know there is a great mystery to the growth of the Kingdom of God. I feel that mystery in myself. I feel the pull to passivity or the drive to think that I need to “bring in the day of brotherhood and end the night of wrong.” But Jesus is saying that though we live in the struggle of the mystery that his words will bear the fruit of the Kingdom of God!

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