Mark 4:30-34
It’s interesting to look at the different types of mustard seeds that were planted in Palestine 2,000 years ago. Each of them are very small and look very plain. They look nothing like the tree they eventually grows into that reaches some 8 to 12 feet high from the tiny seed. And the black mustard seed is particularly interesting given the likelihood that Jesus had this seed variety in mind when he was speaking. This seed not only looks ordinary, it looks even less appealing than the other varieties.
Scripture tells us that there was nothing extraordinary about Jesus’ appearance, and that there was nothing about him that would have suggested that he was destined to change the world (Isaiah 53:2). He was like an ordinary mustard seed. He grew up in an obscure Galilean town. He grew up with an insignificant family who lived ordinary first-century lives. When he began his ministry, he chose working class fisherman, overlooked religious zealots and even a tax collector to become his trusted disciples. And Jesus associated with the poor, the sick, social outcasts and the lowest and most despised people in Israel. By all outward appearances, Jesus showed no promise of changing human history.
But Jesus did change history. With his extraordinary teaching, came unprecedented miracles; and with his miracles came the revelation of who he was. Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God. He was God in human flesh. He was the King of Kings wrapped in an ordinary package. And his death on the cross carried with it so much lasting significance that our historical calendar is now split because of what he has done.
Jesus died as a single mustard seed, but from him rose up a Kingdom that changed the whole world.
From his death came a new people. A people who are not marked by special physical features or noted because they come from a particular geographic boundary. His people are people with new hearts. They are souls who have been humbled and changed by the death of their Savior. They are seeds from the very first Seed. They are a transformed people, who have had the Gospel of God planted in their hearts on account of their Savior’s death and resurrection.
Though in the shade of the great tree the birds are allowed to perch, the Kingdom still grows ever larger. They hide in the shade because they cannot tolerate the light of truth and they steal seeds in defiance of the one who planted the great tree. They build their nests by its dead branches and they eat the fruit it bears. But the birds cannot bring the great tree down. They cannot stop its growth, and in Kingdom terms this great tree will last forever.
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