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Don't Underestimate the Kingdom of God

Let's pray before we open up God's Word together.
Our Father, we thank you for your Word.
We thank you for every part of scripture that is there
to teach us and to encourage us.
Father, we ask you now that you would just allow our hearts and our minds
just to give our full attention to you
and what you would have to say to us this morning through your Word.
We pray that you'd bless this time amongst us
and we pray that we'll not leave this place
until we have truly met with you through the Scriptures.
In Jesus' name we pray it. Amen.
Well, it's not hard to get discouraged as Christians live in the 21st century.
A little over 100 years ago, at Federation,
at the time of the framing of the Constitution,
our nation was largely on board with the Christian ethos
and the Christian ethic.
Indeed, the Federation and the Constitution was largely influenced,
our society was largely influenced by God's Word.
So while not wanting to call us a Christian country,
some might argue with me on that,
it's difficult to argue that the judo-Christian sense of right and wrong
has formed the basis for most or many of our laws
and way of life in Australia.
Now, I mentioned a few weeks ago in the newsletter,
according to the census in 1911, 97%.
97% identified with being Christian.
Today that figure is 61% and falling.
Correspondingly, people are leaving so-called organised religion
and now there is a rise of about 20%
who report saying they have no religion.
So from 18.7% to 22% from the last two census dates.
A rise of 20% saying they've given up on religion altogether.
Our society, in other words, is becoming more and more secular.
But it gets worse, I think.
Today as Christians and the church in general
seem to get more negative publicity than positive.
From intolerance of homosexuality to our anti-abortion pro-life stance
to our anti-pornography views,
we have forever been seen as outdated at best.
And not to mention the guilty by association of the sex abuse
in the wider church and the constant retort of being hypocrites and so on.
As Christians, we are, more often than not,
the punching bags for comedians and for TV shows
and the scorn of bloggers everywhere.
All of a sudden, we are the ones who have been marginalised in society.
We are the ones who are now on the outer.
All of a sudden, we are even tempted to think twice about identifying even
Christians for fear of being ridiculed or ostracised.
All of a sudden, we feel like we are losing the war.
It's not unlike the New South Wales Origin team this week.
Victory in sight.
Hard-fought victory in sight until the final minutes
where the other team, we won't mention their name,
but the other team kicks the winning goal.
All of a sudden, we feel like we are now on the losing team.
Maybe that's how some of you feel today.
And this, today, in this passage, a few verses only,
will hopefully encourage you to think differently
about where we're at as a church, where we're at as God's kingdom.
In today's text, from verse 18 through to 21,
Jesus is too short, perhaps the shortest parables,
to describe the kingdom of God,
to describe what it is like, what it can be compared to, he says.
And in doing so, he encourages his disciples.
And ask today that this kingdom, that his kingdom,
will one day be large and substantial,
despite evidence to the contrary,
despite how we might feel about it, God's kingdom will grow.
Jesus first takes the common mustard seed,
the tiny seed that is planted in the garden
and it grows to become a large tree.
Large enough, Jesus tells us, in this case,
for birds to find a home, for birds to perch,
for birds to make a nest.
Although not common, some mustard seeds will actually grow
to a tree three or even, in fact, four metres high.
From a tiny seed, a tree grows.
Likewise, in the second parable, Jesus is comparing how much yeast.
A small amount of yeast is required to make a difference
in a large amount of flour.
A relatively small amount of yeast is kneaded into a batch of dough
and it permeates throughout the whole batch in order to make it rise.
You'll note, if you've got an NIV,
that the large amount of flour in the Greek
is actually the measurement for about 22 litres of flour.
I don't know why it's litres and not grams, but anyway, or kilograms.
But 22 litres of flour, we're told, and that's large enough,
large enough to feed or make bread for over 100 people.
It's a lot of flour, Jesus is talking about here.
So both illustrations of Jesus are saying the same thing.
Small beginnings does not mean small results or small endings.
Insignificant quantity, be it a seed or be it yeast,
can make a significant difference.
The bottom line here is that the Kingdom of God begins small,
but it will grow large.
It will begin with something insignificant,
but slowly, silently, invisibly at times, it will make a difference.
A significant difference in the world.
It will be a pervading influence in our society.
This is God's plan for His Kingdom.
This is His purpose.
And we shouldn't today miss that purpose.
God's Kingdom will grow.
God's Kingdom will increase in size.
God's Kingdom will make a difference in the world.
It will be an influence.
One way or another, Jesus is saying,
this is what the Kingdom of God is like.
And Jesus will be the King of this great Kingdom.
What does Paul say to the Colossians?
He says that Jesus will reconcile all things to Himself, everything.
The Hebrew writer says that His God,
that God has crowned Jesus with glory and honour
and put everything under His feet.
It's a great big picture of Jesus, isn't it?
Jesus' lordship is therefore all-encompassing.
His kingship is not over some small dominion,
it's over the whole earth.
It's over all the earth.
That's a big plan, isn't it?
And Jesus tells us that the mustard seed
and the yeast are like the Kingdom of Heaven.
From such small and insignificant beginnings,
God's Kingdom will grow into a large and significant entity, if you like.
Disproportionately large compared to its humble beginnings.
And so the emphasis here right at the beginning,
the emphasis here is on the amazing growth
and the extent of the Kingdom of God
as it reaches out like branches on a tree,
as it permeates through society as yeast does today.
That's what the Kingdom of God is like, Jesus is saying.
But we might ask, well, how?
How does God make this happen?
Well, notice that this mustard seed grows into a tree.
A mustard seed is not usually a tree.
It's a herb plant, it's a shrub.
As I said, occasionally it will grow large,
but usually it's a small shrub or a plant.
And so the growth here of this mustard seed and this power
is therefore considered abnormal.
And for Jesus to be saying that it grows into a tree
large enough for birds to find shelter,
he's saying that this is unexpected growth, extraordinary growth.
Indeed, we might even call it supernatural growth.
That is, the Kingdom of God could never grow unless God makes it grow.
Now, this is a necessary reminder for most of us, isn't it?
Kingdom growth does not happen because of slick marketing.
It doesn't increase through the accommodation of modern thinking
and acceptable theology.
It doesn't grow as a result of program,
nor by way of social services, however good they might be.
Now, God's Kingdom expands because of the work of God himself
in the hearts of unbelievers.
We must always remember that the growth of the church
is solely due to the work of God,
and that we have been commissioned to be part of that work
through the proclamation of the Gospel.
What does Paul say in 1 Corinthians, those familiar couple of verses,
"'I planted the seed,' Paul says,
"'Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.'
So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything,
but only God who makes things grow."
Now, this is humbling for most of us in ministry, isn't it?
We can do all we can, we can exert all kinds of effort,
yet at the end of the day, it is God who gives the increase.
But it's also very liberating.
We don't ultimately take responsibility for what is God's work.
Yes, we're to be faithful in undertaking the planting and the watering,
but remember, it is God who makes it grow.
We do not bang our heads, in other words, against brick walls.
We need not feel complete failures when we see no growth happening.
We need not get so stressed and so anxious
about something that we ultimately can't control.
And so it's comforting to know that it is God who is at work in this world.
It is God who himself establishes and grows his kingdom.
Now, the story of God's people has always been like that.
God uses insignificant things, insignificant people,
to make or do mighty things,
and the credit never belonged to the people, but to God himself.
If we go back to the Book of Judges, for example,
God uses the left-handed Ehud.
Left-handed was considered a sign of weakness.
Apologies to all those left-handed people. I'm one of them.
But he uses the left-handed Ehud to strike King Eglon dead,
so defeating the Moabites.
He used Deborah, a woman, also considered a weakness,
to defeat the Canaanites.
He used the low-born Gideon to defeat the Midianites.
Remember Gideon's protest.
My clan is the weakest and I am the least in my family.
Now, you're in real trouble if you're a left-handed woman in Gideon's family,
but he's using... God uses the weakness of the human race, doesn't he?
Gideon was used to defeat over 100,000 Midianites with only 300 men.
And so the Old Testament is replete with such instances of that.
Reminds that small things, weak, insignificant people in the hands of God,
is no insignificant thing.
In the New Testament, Jesus used a small, unimportant, insignificant bunch
of mostly uneducated and timid men
to break the Kingdom of God into the world.
It does not start with a glorious fanfare
of self-important bigwigs of the religious establishment,
nor did it start with kings and rulers,
nor did it start with some mighty military machine.
Human power and might have nothing to do with it,
have nothing to do with the beginning of God's Kingdom.
No, instead, God used those who, humanly speaking,
were never going to set the world on fire.
But God was able to use them.
God was able to work through them.
Insignificant people in the hands of God is no insignificant thing.
And therefore, what is clear is that
it's not because of those people that God used,
but it was that God was working through them.
Willing people, for sure, but God was the one doing the work.
The Kingdom of God is a supernatural entity.
It is His Kingdom.
But you might ask, I don't see God's Kingdom growing.
What is God doing in today's world?
Well, true, but quite often the Kingdom grows,
or there is Kingdom growth that is not quite obvious.
Let's return to the two parables again.
Do you see the mustard seed, or any seed for that matter,
grow inch by inch?
Generally, you don't.
If you planted it and watched and waited,
you wouldn't see it grow, would you?
Do you see the yeast at work in the dough?
Probably not.
Now, it's true when we plant a seed
and we come back in 12 months' time,
we might look at where we planted that seed
and we might see that it's shot up a little bit
and we might declare, this seed has grown,
but day in, day out, week after week,
we don't see it, do we?
Maybe even month after month, we don't see the growth.
That's the same with the yeast.
It's the gradual rising of the dough.
Slowly, almost secretly,
the yeast permeates into the dough to make it rise.
But the fact is, we don't often see it.
It's a gradual growth, either for the tree or for the dough.
But it doesn't mean that the seed is not developing.
It doesn't mean that the yeast has failed.
And often, we cannot see God's kingdom growing, either.
We're often prone to discouragement at this point
when it comes to the effectiveness of the gospel
and the kingdom in this world.
We feel overwhelmed at times by our society
and its ideologies creeping into the church
and influencing the church
rather than the church influencing the world and society.
We feel outdone by perhaps other religions
seemingly to have more converts than us.
We often feel that we're on the losing side
and not the winning side.
And I think in this power we can take some comfort,
can't we?
Just because we cannot see the kingdom grow
doesn't mean that it is not.
The kingdom grows gradually,
sometimes terribly unseen in an unseen way.
Small increase by small increase, one increment at a time,
one changed life at a time,
one person giving his or her life over to Christ at a time.
And if you try watching, you probably won't see it.
But stand back from it.
Stand back and view the influence and the growth
over the past, say, 2,000 years.
Consider how from 12 men,
consider how from such a small beginning,
God's kingdom has grown
and has reached every quarter of the world.
Think of the hospitals and the orphanages and the schools
and other social programs that have begun
because of the love and the concern of Christians in the church.
Think of all the governments that have been established on kingdom values.
Read about the towns and cities that have been transformed
through the gospel, through the preaching and the proclamation of the gospel.
See how the branches of the kingdom have started out as a tiny seed,
have spread and have touched every part of society.
See how the granules, each granule of yeast,
permeates through the community to influence it.
For the sake of the kingdom.
A tree keeps growing out and reaching out.
The yeast keeps doing its work until it is complete.
That is what the kingdom of God is like, Jesus says.
As Christians, we ought to be half full kind of people.
Yes, there may be difficult times for the church,
but at the end of the day,
if we take these two parables at face value,
then Jesus is saying that we are part of a great movement,
a movement that will continue to grow
and one that will continue to influence the world.
We must never believe that we're on the losing side of history.
Despite the ever-growing presence of other religions
or the secularisation of our society,
God will continue to grow and increase his kingdom.
As I said at the beginning,
recent statistics from the census suggest
that people leaving the Christian religion,
and this has been the trend really over the last 100 years
and may continue to do so.
Yet there's another statistic that's also true.
Did you know that there were about 645 million evangelicals in the world
growing 3.5 times faster than the world's population?
That's an encouraging statistic, isn't it?
Evangelicals who are the subset of Christianity,
that is those who believe in the transformative power
of the gospel of Jesus Christ,
as a subset of Christianity,
is the world's fastest-growing religious movement
and the only movement growing significantly through conversion.
That's a good thing to note, isn't it?
God is at work where God said he would be at work.
We might not see thousands upon thousands of conversions,
but God is at work.
God is growing his church.
He's growing his kingdom.
The mustard seed is growing into a tree.
The yeast is permeating through the yeast.
We should never underestimate the kingdom of God.
We should never underestimate God working in the world.
And just because we don't see the growth,
just because we don't see what God is doing in the world
in building his kingdom, we ought not to be discouraged.
He is working. He is working.
But he doesn't do it alone, does he?
For any seed to be useful, what must happen?
It must be planted in the soil.
If it is kept in a jar dry in your garden shed,
it'll just remain a tiny seed, doesn't it?
For it to fulfil its purpose, it must be put into the soil.
The yeast is useless until it is kneaded into the dough.
The dough is left unchanged
until the yeast has permeated throughout.
The yeast to be effective
must be in contact with the flour to be effective.
For God's kingdom to grow, it must be in the world.
It must be in contact with those who are not, in fact, in God's kingdom.
And this means you and I, as members of God's kingdom,
we are to be in the world.
Again, to quote Jesus, not of the world, but in the world,
making contact with those who are not part of God's kingdom,
those who are not yet believers.
We are, by God's good design,
his partners in growing his kingdom.
We must always remember that although the growth of the kingdom
is solely due to the work of God,
we have been commissioned to be part of that work.
That's a great privilege, isn't it,
that we are part of growing God's kingdom.
What use will be in the world
if we only ever spend time with other Christians?
We are to be in the world, as I've said, as Jesus says,
rubbing shoulders with those who have not yet heard about Jesus and the gospel.
And as we do, we participate, then, in the extension of his kingdom.
We become the seed that is planted in the soil that grows into the tree.
We become the yeast that transforms this dough into bread,
slowly influencing those we come in contact with,
being agents of change as we proclaim and live out the gospel of Jesus before others.
That's how we participate in growing God's kingdom today.
And most of us here are insignificant by world standards.
But remember, as we've seen, in the hands of God,
even the smallest, even the most insignificant person can be used by God.
Each one of us who are Christians here today
can be used by God to extend and to grow his kingdom.
I think in these two short parables, we can take a lot of comfort.
We are on the winning side, because Jesus says that his kingdom will grow.
His kingdom will increase.
His kingdom will extend out like the branches of a tree.
And in this, we should be encouraged.
But more than that, we should be encouraged
because God has promised to set his redemptive kingdom-building plans in place,
and nothing can change it.
This is part of God's plan for his kingdom.
This is part of God's plan for his world.
That's the confidence we should have today
as we ponder these two short parables.
So let me ask you in closing,
do we trust Jesus when he says,
I will build my church and the gates of hell will never prevail against it?
Do we trust God's word when he says,
greater is he that is in you, meaning the Holy Spirit,
than he, meaning Satan, that is in the world?
Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world?
Do we trust God's word at that point?
Do we believe Jesus when he says that his Father is greater than all?
No one can snatch us out of the Father's hand.
Do we really believe that at the name of Jesus,
every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and that one day every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord?
Not just every Christian, but all of creation.
Do we believe that this morning?
Do we believe that Jesus sits in the place of ultimate authority
at God's right hand, far above as we read,
far above all rule and authority, over all power and dominion,
and that God has placed all things under his feet
and appointed him to be head over everything for the church?
Here's a wonderful passage of scripture that we need to consider
when we think about God's kingdom.
And right into the Colossians, Paul says that Jesus is the image
of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation,
for by him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities,
all things were created by him and for him.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Do we believe that this morning?
Do we have confidence that the kingdom of God will be established
and that Jesus the King will rule forever in power and authority?
These words ought to spur us on as believers this morning.
Yes, it looks like at times when we look outside these doors
that we're on the losing team.
It may appear that the influence of the church is waning,
the influence of Christians are waning.
It may appear that the church is downsizing
and that our own meagre effort makes very little difference
to its growth and its extension.
That God's kingdom, Jesus says, is like a mustard seed.
It's like yeast.
It will continue to grow, it will continue to spread out,
throughout the whole world, until God's job is done.
I played soccer when I was at school.
I was full-back for my entire soccer career.
I didn't move one inch across the halfway line.
I played that position because my skill level wasn't particularly great.
I could never quite manage to kick a ball straight, and I still can't.
So all I had to do, all my role was on that team,
was to boot the ball up the other end.
It didn't really matter whether it went to the left or the right
or straight ahead.
All I had to do was to get it over the line.
That was all my job.
And if I did that, the coach was happy.
I did that for six or seven years.
Yet despite my skills, despite my meagre contribution to the team,
I was part of a team that was the best team in the competition.
We never lost a regular match in the whole of high school
plus some years in primary school.
And so despite my contribution,
I was still part of a winning team, of the winning team.
And sometimes we need to look beyond our own circumstances.
Sometimes we need to look beyond our own situation, our own self,
to view the bigger picture that takes us beyond our street,
beyond our suburb, beyond our city, beyond even our country.
We may look around and see our local sphere of God's kingdom
and wonder, what is going on?
What is God doing here in Glendale, in Newcastle,
in New South Wales, in Australia, and so on?
What is God doing?
But we must realise that we as Christians,
despite what we might see around us,
we are all part of God's winning team,
despite our meagre efforts and despite what we see around us.
So how more than ever do we need to trust in God's plan
and His purpose for His kingdom?
Let me pray.
Two short parables, Our Father,
but yet two parables that ought to encourage each one of us today
that are feeling discouraged about what you are doing in the world.
It's too easy for us to get depressed,
too easy for us to get discouraged
when we don't see the Christian influence
at levels that maybe we think it ought to be,
levels maybe that have been 50 years ago, 100 years ago,
and yet we know that you have a plan for your kingdom.
Father, help us this day to meditate upon these words,
not just these parables, but other parts of scripture
that talk about the bigness and the greatness of your kingdom,
the bigness and the greatness of Jesus the King.
Help us to be encouraged, to be spurred on,
to be part of the growth of your kingdom, Lord.
Give us the skills, give us the opportunities
to proclaim your gospel, to see your word transform our lives,
the lives of people we come in contact with
and our countries and our society, Lord.
We know that your word can do that.
Please let us be your agents, we pray.
In Jesus' name, Amen.