Tag: mustard seed

Understanding the Parable of the Mustard Seed

The Kingdom of God, like a mustard seed, grows significantly from humble beginnings.

Core of the Bible podcast #132 – Understanding the parable of the mustard seed

Luke 13:18-19 RSV – He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his garden; and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”

Messiah taught about the Kingdom of God using many different parables or brief, symbolic representations. In this instance, he compares the Kingdom of God to the life cycle of a mustard seed. It is one of the smallest seeds that exist, yet mustard seeds can grow to be large enough for people to sit under for shade or for birds to come and make nests within its branches.

Parables were designed to share spiritual truths but in symbolic ways. Even in the gospel narratives, not everyone understood all of the parables, but many times in private, Messiah would reveal the meaning of the symbolism to his disciples.

I believe the imagery Messiah uses here is drawn from the prophets, specifically Daniel. In one instance, Daniel was asked to interpret the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, who, at that time, was the dominant leader of the known world. King Nebuchadnezzar had dreamt of a large tree and shared the details with Daniel. Daniel replied:

Daniel 4:20-22 RSV – The tree you saw, which grew and became strong, so that its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth; whose leaves were fair and its fruit abundant, and in which was food for all; under which beasts of the field found shade, and in whose branches the birds of the air dwelt— it is you, O king, who have grown and become strong. Your greatness has grown and reaches to heaven, and your dominion to the ends of the earth.

This great tree, i.e., Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom, had grown to have dominion over the known world. Messiah uses almost the exact same imagery in his parable of the Kingdom of God: “it grew and became a tree,” and “the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”

One of the early church fathers (that is, one of the early Christian leaders and thinkers) had this to say regarding this parable:

“The seed of the Gospel is the least of seeds, because the disciples were weaker than the whole of mankind; yet forasmuch as there was great might in them, their preaching spread throughout the whole world…” –John Chrysostom (347-407 AD).

The original parable, while having many different interpretations assigned to various parts of the word picture, essentially explains itself when simply taken at face value. We know it is about the Kingdom of God because that is the comparison being made. It was explained as beginning as a very small seed. Consider that the movement began with Messiah and his twelve disciples. Yet, through their teaching and traveling in response to the Great Commission, they were able to spread the teaching of the Kingdom throughout the known world in less than forty years under the bitterest of persecution. As a result, the “greatness [of God’s Kingdom] has grown and reaches to heaven, and [God’s] dominion to the ends of the earth.”

Matthew 28:18-20 RSV – And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

Due to their faithfulness, the parable of the mustard seed became a reality in their generation. It is now up to each successive generation, with the abilities provided by God, to continue to work to reach the farthest limits of their own generations with the truths of the Kingdom of God.

The kingdom growing until it fills all

Believers in Messiah are part of a chain that is thousands of years old.

Believers in Messiah are part of a chain that is thousands of years old, and one that will continue until it fills the earth.

Luke 13:18-21 – He said, therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like, and what can I compare it to? It’s like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the sky nested in its branches.
Again he said, “What can I compare the kingdom of God to? It’s like leaven that a woman took and mixed into fifty pounds of flour until all of it was leavened.”

If we want to know what the Kingdom of God looks like, we need only to review the parables of Yeshua, since this is where he laid out definitions of the Kingdom for those who were willing to hear. Now, we know that we can’t necessarily just take a surface reading of the parables, because the parables were designed to allow those who wanted to hear the teaching to understand it, and those who were not willing to listen to not understand it.

Luke 8:9-10 – Then his disciples asked him, “What does this parable mean? ” So he said, “The secrets of the kingdom of God have been given for you to know, but to the rest it is in parables, so that ‘Looking they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.'”

The parable of the mustard seed illustrates how the Kingdom would be something that starts extremely small and would grow until it was large enough to support a wildlife habitat. This would be a contrary understanding of the Kingdom to the Jewish ear of Yeshua’s day, because they had the understanding the Kingdom would come in triumphantly and God’s Messiah would rule over all kingdoms immediately, similar to many Christians’ expectation of Messiah’s return in our day.

However, we find Yeshua’s illustration perfectly described the actual working out of God’s Kingdom on the earth: it would start small (Yeshua and the twelve disciples), grow into a larger group (the first-century remnant of Israel), and then spread to become a tree large enough to support its own habitat (illustrated by all believers in Messiah up through our day).

The secondary parable of the leaven carries the same message: the kingdom would start small like the small bit of leaven, but once mixed in with the rest of the dough would end up working its way throughout the entire batch until all of the dough had been affected by the leaven.

Both of these parable explain the same dynamic: the Kingdom starts small, but comes to grow throughout the entirety of the world. While not what the Jews of the day were expecting, it was, however, prophesied in the book of Daniel to do this very thing.

When Daniel was interpreting King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of an image made of gold, silver, bronze, and clay mixed with iron, Daniel explained that God had granted Nebuchadnezzar a vision of the future, and that each of these metals represented a kingdom, ending in what was to become the Roman Empire; the iron mixed with clay.

Daniel 2:34-35 – “As you were watching, a stone broke off without a hand touching it, struck the statue on its feet of iron and fired clay, and crushed them. Then the iron, the fired clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were shattered and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors. The wind carried them away, and not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.”

Daniel described that a stone struck the statue in its feet (which ended up occurring during the Roman empire through the message and teaching of Yeshua) and it became a mountain that filled the whole earth. This growth language is very similar to Yeshua’s parables of the mustard seed and the leaven. Daniel then provides a further explanation by saying to the king:

Daniel 2:43-45 – “You saw the iron mixed with clay ​– ​the peoples will mix with one another but will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with fired clay. In the days of those kings, the God of the heavens will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, and this kingdom will not be left to another people. It will crush all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, but will itself endure forever. You saw a stone break off from the mountain without a hand touching it, and it crushed the iron, bronze, fired clay, silver, and gold. The great God has told the king what will happen in the future. The dream is certain, and its interpretation reliable.”

The kingdom that God was to set up “in the days of those kings” was indeed the Kingdom of God, ushered in by Messiah, that would be eternal and bring all other kingdoms to an end. Even to this day, the branches continue to extend and the leaven continues to cause the dough to rise. It will not stop until it “fills the earth,” as Daniel predicted.

This is the kingdom we are privileged to be a part of, and one in which we can have a part in its continued expansion. As we live out its principles, we begin to influence those around us with its righteous standards and others can be drawn to Yahweh and his Messiah through our faithfulness. Our obedience to the principles of God’s Word, his Torah, is the catalyst, the leaven, that can cause hearts to forsake the kingdoms of this world and surrender to the Lordship of Messiah.

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