Emmaus Road Church by Emmaus Road Church

October 23, 2022 Healthy Growth

HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS 026

Mark 4:26–29

Matthew 13:24–30

Matthew 13:31–32 / Mark 4:30–32

Matthew 13:33–35 / Mark 4:33–34

HEALTHY GROWTH

// INTRO

It was William James who wrote, “I am Done with Great Things!”

In one of his letters, the philosopher and psychologist shared a conviction regarding his focus not on big, grand things, but with small “almost invisible” decisions:

“I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets,... yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man’s pride.”

He rightly points out that mankind is usually obsessed with the big and grandiose, but overlooking the importance of small things

We love BIG! God bless ‘MERICA!! Bigger is better!

And we’re proud!

And I could go on and on about Western culture and values, but what I want to say simply is that we tend to focus on all the wrong things in this life, and in the process, we miss many things that God is doing

Things in the normal mundane everyday

Things He’s doing in small places in small ways

Things He’s doing in and through average, everyday people who aren’t in the spotlight, who don’t have prestige, fame, or power

We’ve got our lines crossed when it comes to greatness and humility

Now it has been said that “He who has never been humbled cannot be great - humility is the true test of greatness!”

And I believe that to be absolutely true

This is why Jesus is the greatest Man to ever live

There is no one more humble, and thus more great, than Jesus

We’ve spent a good deal of time in previous weeks talking about this inverted Kingdom

Those seeking applause and accolades will find themselves humbled

And those who humble themselves, Jesus said, will be exalted

It is a Kingdom of inversion - a 180 degree departure from the default settings of this life

In the Kingdom, small things can be incredibly potent and powerful

The size of a thing is not necessarily proportional to its potency or importance

And this is something we need to keep in mind as born-again Believers in Jesus

When we look with our physical eyes, we’re often wrong about what we perceive

But to be in the Kingdom means that we need to look through spiritual eyes informed by God’s Word

What we think to be good at first glance, can actually be harmful

And that which we overlook due to it’s plainness and lack of shimmer can turn out to be priceless in the Kingdom of God

So with that paradigm in mind, let’s go to the text this morning

// TEXT & EXPOSITION

SECTION 84

Mark 4:26–29

[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.”

Right off the bat, Jesus reminds us that these parables are about the nature of God’s Kingdom

And remember that Jesus has established for His disciples that His teaching in parables is for them, and not for those outside that circle

That will be true for the duration of Jesus’ earthly life, but will cease to be true once He’s been resurrected and then has ascended into Heaven

We’re simply told that the Kingdom is as if a man scattered seed on the ground

That sounds a lot like the parable we unpacked last week

But notice the dichotomy in this parable - the man scatters seed but the seed sprouts and grows

This tells us something VERY important

This tells us that Mankind has responsibility in this AND that God has responsibility in this

It’s not one or the other - it’s both

Though certainly not exhaustive, some of those include the responsibility to love, to lead our families, to do and teach what is right

And God has taken on some responsibilities, as well

He creates, sustains, loves, gives us His Word, creates good things for us to enjoy, leads us when we ask and pray

So Man works and God works

And this was and is His idea, and how He set it up

We see this in the parable where the seed of the Gospel has a life and power of its own

This again speaks to the sufficiency of God’s Word, as we established last week

All the farmer can do is plant the seed in suitable ground

He cannot make it grow

He doesn’t even understand how it grows

The Kingdom of God grows because of the mysterious power of the seed (God’s Word) to produce a crop

Thinking practically about this parable of the seed that grows, one of the outcomes here is the certainty of a harvest

And the parable seems to be establishing that there is some element of mystery here for us

We don’t know or understand all of the ways in which God’s Word works - we just believe that it does!

So this seed that Jesus has given to us germinates, sprouts, grows and produces fruit in mysterious ways

And in our present age, God’s Kingdom grows according to His will

SECTION 85

Matthew 13:24–30

[24] He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, [25] but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. [26] So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. [27] And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ [28] He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ [29] But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. [30] Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”

An enemy sowed tares, which means we need to answer the question, “What are tares?”

A tare was a darnel weed prevalent in Israel, that is largely indistinguishable from wheat until it matures and bears fruit

These people start out incognito, but generally blossom into false converts and false leaders

In other words, at some point where there should be maturation and fruit, they begin to show that there is none

Some people go their whole lives, playing at being a Christian

I know - I was one of those until my senior year of college

I claimed to know and have a relationship with Jesus Christ, but there was NO fruit at all in my life

And that’s how you know

Such was the case with Diotrephes in 3 John and the false apostles mentioned in Revelation 2

The enemy who sowed those tares, did it at night and in the darkness:

Ephesians 6:12 - For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Jesus speaking to Saul:

Acts 26:16-18

16 But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you,17 delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you 18 to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’

Colossians 1:13-14

13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

This is the work and Satan and his demons, to sow tares

Pulling up the tares would damage the wheat so he sends enemies of the Gospel into the Church to confuse things

A current example would be something like Critical Race Theory

That’s sowing tares in the Church

Churches in western culture are all too ready to grab onto something new or exciting - it’s a function of our consumerist mindset instead of having the mind of Christ

God’s solution? Teach the Word and challenge people to embrace orthodoxy and live it out

Love them, disciple them, get the Word in them and get them sharing their faith

And when they won’t, and flatly refuse to do anything other than sit and soak, invite them to try other churches (we call it out-counseling)

Oh, Pastor! That sounds so harsh!

It is. And when things have come to that point, it generally has to be

Jesus says that what is sown in the heart will eventually show itself for what it really is

It will show itself to be good fruit/harvest or tares (looks good on the outside but has no substance)

And as an undershepherd of Christ Jesus, I am tasked with being a fruit inspector (and some of y’all are WAY fruity!)

But if the worst you’ve ever known is being disciplined in the Church, that was for your benefit

And if you can’t embrace it and heed it, it only gets worse

Jesus says that the crop is gathered on the Day of Judgment and is separated or judged for what it really is

The good wheat (that which produced fruit as a sign of true salvation) was gathered into God’s barn/storehouse (heaven)

The tares which produced NO fruit, were cast into the fire (of Hell)

They looked good on the outside, but inwardly they never surrendered and submitted to Jesus

They were not saved

Now you tell me, is it loving to pass over the tares and let them go on pretending, ending up in eternal torment

OR is it more loving to confront them now, even to say hard words to someone, and risk offending them in order for them to see the truth about themselves?

Some of us in the Church need to grow a backbone

The Church today has an abundance of Evan-jellyfish (Christians without spines)

Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is to confront and rebuke someone

And if you know my testimony, then you know that it was 3 young women in the Music Dept at the college I attended, who took me to lunch and called me out on my duplicity

Without that confrontation, I don’t know if I’d be here today

Do the hard thing

Say the hard thing

Do it in love

This age will end when Jesus (the Judge of the world) separates the weeds from the wheat (judgment)

The weeds (all who do evil) will be thrown into the fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth

The wheat (the righteous) will be revealed and will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father (the future Kingdom which will appear at the end of the age)

God’s justice will finally be fulfilled

SECTION 86

Matthew 13:31–32

[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.”

Mark 4:30–32

[30] And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? [31] 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.”

This is one of my FAVORITE parables because when you actually parse it out, it surprises most people

Jesus says that the mustard seed is the smallest of seeds, but when it was planted, it becme this HUGE (like an evergreen) tree

A mustard bush, when fully grown, is usually 2-3 feet high at most

Some of the cedars in my backyard are 70-90 feet high

So this mustard seed growing to the size of a large tree is definitely abnormal

It becomes so large, in fact, that the birds of the air come to make their nests in it

Now, that doesn’t sound like such a big deal at first

In fact, it sounds like a good thing - we like birds

And don’t we want people to come to church?

But we have to remember our consistent idioms (word pictures) that Jesus is using

The “birds of the air” are the ones that snatched the seed away in the parable of the 4 soils

Jesus called them the messengers of the evil one

So take that explanation back into this parable

Jesus is saying that the Church got so BIG that messengers of the Evil One could come in and be at home and not be seen for what they are

You know what we call that?

We call that a MEGA-CHURCH, and it’s not a good thing, in my estimation

When it comes the Church, bigger is not always better

Yes, more resources allow us to do more ministry, but there’s a limit

And I think in America especially, we’ve assumed a different interpretation of this parable because what Jesus is actually saying goes against our consumer mentality

SECTION 87

Matthew 13:33–35

[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.”

The usual interpretation is that the leaven is the gospel and the woman is the church, but given the consistency of Jesus’ use of idioms, I don’t believe this is the case at all

Because of that interpretation, many have thought at various times that the church was going to introduce the millennium to the world, and that it would usher in the Kingdom

In the 1800’s (the age of progress), it was widely held that the gospel would so permeate the world that Christianity would be universally accepted all over the planet

But that doesn’t line up with the parables we already have deciphered

In fact, leaven is used consistently in the parables as a bad thing, because matza, or unleavened bread was the staple of the day

As we’ve already seen, Jesus used leaven consistently as an idiom for false doctrine

To unravel this, we have to go back to Genesis 18 and the first mention of “three measures of meal” in the Biblical text

During their conversation, it suddenly dawned on Abram that God Himself was visiting him, accompanied by two angels

That was the beginning of the use of the three measures of meal as a symbol for fellowship

Going back to the Exodus in Egypt, before the Jews ate the first Passover, God sent them all through their houses with candles and lamps looking for leaven

They were to clear every bit of it out of the house lest any of it get into the three measures of meal, or the Passover feast, and destroy the beauty of the symbolism free from sin

Never once is leaven ever used as a symbol of anything good in Jesus’ parables

Everyone in this crowd knew that this woman had no business putting leaven into these three measures of meal

That was to destroy the very meaning of this significant offering, for Scripture had taught them that the three measures of meal were to be unleavened

In the New Testament you find five distinct usages of leaven and they all mean somet

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