Category: Devotional Grist

George Barna Group

‘What we’re finding is that when we ask them about all the key issues of the day, [90 percent of Pastors] telling us, Yes, the Bible speaks to every one of these issues. Then we ask them: Well, are you teaching your people what the Bible says about those issues?–and the numbers drop…to less than 10 percent of pastors who say they will speak to it.’

The reasons for that doubtless are varied. I intend to suggest a couple.

First, many conservative Pastor have been convinced that the pulpit is not the place for these kinds of pedestrian messages. The thought goes that the Pulpit is so special that we dare not waste time in it teaching on comparatively un-spiritual issue of the day. And so Ministers avoid issues like what God’s word teaches on issues like “Capital Punishment,” “progressive taxation,” “death or property tax,” “usury,” “centralized banking,” “minimum wage laws” or “illegal immigration,” as well as any number of other subject matter that is deemed “not Holy enough for the pulpit.” “We need to focus on ‘Spiritual Issues,’ so the story goes and as such God’s people hear very little of God’s mind on these types of issues.

Second, the reasons like these issues don’t come up in the pulpit is that they are prone to being controversial and as ministers like to avoid controversy so that the giving doesn’t go down, because angry people leave Churches, ministers tend to avoid these kind of subject matters like the plague.

The Barna report that I cited out of the chute confirms this reasoning. The report went on to ask: “Why the disconnect between your confidence that God speaks to all of life but your reluctance to teach that? According to Barna, the answer is simple. The answer lies in the conviction that Pastors are concerned about building big Church and one can’t build large churches based on sermons that are inherently controversial.

A third reason that these kinds of subject are not broached from the Pulpit may also be fear of the IRS 501c3 tax-exempt status being revoked.

Today we briefly take up one of those controversial issues and that is the issue of immigration,

43The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. 44He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail.

Here God explicitly says that one consequence of His people’s disobedience is that they are oppressed by the stranger that is among them.

The immigrants who live among you will be promoted over you, higher and higher! But you will be demoted, lower and lower!

Deuteronomy 28:43 (Common English Bible Translation)

There are more than one Hebrew word translated as “stranger,” “sojourner,” “alien,”

The picture that is painted is one of an outsider among a foreign people who at times is a part of the culture and at other times is on the margins. This is a person who is counted among a specific people, but does not themselves belong to that people. They are required to obey the laws of the land, and can even participate in some of the customs, but in the end, they are still outsiders. This status threatens to lead to oppression, even though oppression of the sojourner and other marginalized people is expressly prohibited.  This paints a picture of a people who exist within the nation, but occupy the margins; they are in, but not included. There are thus continuities and discontinuities between the alien and the native born.

Of all the verses in Deuteronomy, the passage that sends the most mixed signals on this word and concept is Deut 5:12-15. Here sojourners are promised the same Sabbath rest as citizens, an indication of equality. However, when viewed in a slightly different manner we notice they are listed after children, slaves and livestock, which could indicate they were viewed no higher than the beasts of burden.

So, what we see here is that this idea of stranger, alien, sojourner requires context in order of us to understand how it is being used. Clearly in this Dt. 28 passage the word is being used in more of a discontinuity sense. We know this because God is saying that disobedience will bring the result that the alien … the one not belonging to the Israel as Israel will rise higher and higher over them. A clear demarcation is being made between the immigrant and the native son.

The resident alien (ger) in Israel was never so integrated and assimilated into the Israeli social order that the distinction between citizen born and alien evaporated. The resident alien (ger) was held to the same law, could become part of the worship cult BUT they were always known as distinct from Israeli born. Hence they are continuously referred to as ger (stranger).

Having said this we should realize that clearly there is a immigrant class that is living among the people of God. This people are not to be oppressed. They are to be treated with justice according to God’s law and they are to be able to find a way in the land. However, they are clearly the “tail” of the social order.

We know this because the text teaches that the roles will be reversed for disobedience. They who were once the head will become the tail and those who were once the tail will become the head.

So one judgment of God upon Israel’s disobedience is that God’s people will become strangers and aliens in their own land.

We should note here also that this text does away with notions of egalitarianism. All peoples in all settings are not equal. God speaks here of one people being a tail and one people being a head and says that He is the one that makes that to be the case and in here we learn that obedience to God’s Law results in being the head.

It is not Christianity that teaches egalitarianism but rather it is Liberalism as Machen noted,

“… one thing is perfectly plain—whether or not liberals are Christians, it is at any rate perfectly clear that liberalism is not Christianity. And that being the case, it is highly undesirable that liberalism and Christianity should continue to be propagated within the bounds of the same organization. A separation between the two parties in the Church is the crying need of the hour… The modern liberal doctrine is that all men everywhere, no matter what their race or creed, are brothers.”

(J.Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p.133)

Of course we have come to the point that we no longer think in terms of categories like stranger, alien, foreigner, and sojourner which means we no longer think in terms of family. If we take Deuteronomy 28 seriously and find delight with the stranger being lifted above us we must at least ask ourselves if we hate our family and secondly if we are under God’s just punishment for our disobedience.

When we think of our own immigration issues we see that the result here is also that the head is becoming the tail and that the tail is becoming the head

This reality is portrayed as low skill labor class immigrants saturate our markets. Because of this immigration saturation opportunities for the native born at the entry job level have markedly decreased and those Americans who are the most to be hurt by this policy have experienced a dip in wages as a result of this saturation immigration.  Immigration expert George Borjas estimates that immigration is responsible for half the decrease observed in the wages of high-school dropouts.  “The biggest winners from immigration are owners of businesses that employ a lot of immigrant labor and other users of immigrant labor”, writes Borjas. “The other big winners are the immigrants themselves.”  The primary losers are native citizens with minimal skills and low levels of education.

There is a head and tail reversal going on here as a consequence of disobedience to God’s law.   This saturation immigration is creating a coercive and massive transfer of wealth from productive tax payers to the world’s poor from other nations.  Knowing this about illegal immigration and still supporting illegal immigration is an endorsement thus of theft on a grand scale in the name of philanthropic do-goodism and “Christian” charity. It is to invoke the sanctity of theft in the name of Christian charity. It is to disinherit our children so as to place the alien above the native born. James Hoffmeier, in his book, “The Immigration Crisis” teaches that a State is under no compulsion to have a generous immigration policy and does have a responsibility to protect its borders –just as States did even in the Old Testament. The biblical texts used by progressive Christian organizations like “Sojourners” to support illegal immigration are ripped out of their context in order to guilt the laity into thinking being a good Christian means disinheriting one’s self and children by supporting illegal immigration.

R. J. Rushdoony probed these issues as far back as 1965 in the context of the passage of the Immigration law that has finally placed us where we are now at. Rushdoony said then,

“The purpose of this immigration policy then is to unify man, to bring about the unity of the godhead. Its purpose, and its premise, is not economic but religious. It is theologically rooted in this religious dream, the United Nations.”

Rushdoony realized that the 1965 immigration act was religious in its essence. It was about pursuing a New World Order where man would be God. Rushdoony was insisting that where Humansim thrives, via Statist expression, there you will have a Unitarianism that requires the same oneness in all men, in a universal order, as obtains in the Unitarian God State.

One God-State to rule them all,
One God-State to find them,
One God-State to amalgamate them all,
and in the darkness bind them

So, Rushdoony realized that the immigration push was to eliminate all borders so that the humanist global order could come to the fore. Rushdoony understood that the immigration act in 1965 (and what is currently happening is merely the flowering of that Legislation) was being pushed by Humanists desiring to destroy the Nation State order. Rushdoony understood that such immigration was not Biblical because its real purpose and goal was the destruction of a Christian social order and the Christian religion.

This intent to assimilate the world into a New World Order via mass migration and immigration has no historical legs in terms of Biblical Christianity.

A Reformed Old Testament scholar Martin Wyngaarden, from Calvin Seminary a generation ago, recognized this when he wrote,

“Thus the highest description of Jehovah’s covenant people is applied to Egypt, — “my people,” — showing that the Gentiles will share the covenant blessings, not less than Israel. Yet the several nationalities are here kept distinct, even when Gentiles share, in the covenant blessing, on a level of equality with Israel. Egypt, Assyria and Israel are not nationally merged. And the same principles, that nationalities are not obliterated, by membership in the covenant, applies, of course, also in the New Testament dispensation.”

“More than a dozen excellent commentaries could be mentioned that all interpret Israel as thus inclusive of Jew and Gentile, in this verse, — the Gentile adherents thus being merged with the covenant people of Israel, though each nationality remains distinct.”

Martin J. Wyngaarden
The Future of the Kingdom in Prophecy and Fulfillment: A Study of the Scope of “Spiritualization” in Scripture pp. 101-102.

Before 1950 or so no orthodox Christian theologian of any heft believed in this mass amalgamation project that mass immigration portends.

Conclusion,

The common view of immigration on the Left is that Mass immigration is a useful weapon on four fronts

1.) The war against the ideal of limited government

The influx of third world immigrants that is being advocated will result in the burgeoning power of the State as these new immigrants vote for candidates who will take from the stolen monies of citizens, that are nested in the Government coffers, and redistribute those monies to the new race pimps representing the immigrant constituency. The consequence of this, of course, is to expand government in its stealing from Paul to give to Peter routine.

2.) The greater jihad against the historic American nation itself

Bertolt Brecht in a similar context where people had risen up against their government poetically asked,

Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

Clearly a state apparatus that fancies that the best arrangement for a State is a Centralized top down State replete with a planned economy is going to do all it can to create a citizenry that agrees with them and will support the State. Traditional Americans who know their history and are familiar with their birthright will be, at the very least, diluted by the immigration influx.

3.) Enriching the Super Wealthy by swamping the market with low wage slaves.

Immigration redistributes the wealth upward into the pockets of the super-wealthy as wages are suppressed while the super rich get richer. What this means is a “have vs. have not” social order with the corresponding erasure of the middle class. For the “haves” there are high stock prices, rising home values and surging corporate profits buoying their recovery-era incomes . For the “have nots”their incomes are weighed down and falling by high unemployment and stagnant wages  due to the labor surplus created by untrammeled immigration.

“Love” for the immigration translates into disregard for the native born. We take care of the world at the expense of disinheriting our own children.

4.) And the Ultimate goal … To destroy the Historically Orthodox Christian Faith

This provides the ultimate reason biblical Christians should resist untrammeled immigration. Ultimately the agenda in this mad pursuit is to recruit the pagan hordes and so dilute the leverage and muscle of what little remains of Christianity. All of this is ultimately at attack on the Crown Rights of the Lord Christ. It is a indirect attack on Christianity. The intent is to pull down those who have most carried the banner of Christianity on a civilizational basis. In pulling down the West via mass immigration and amalgamation, Christianity falls also.

Most of the types of Biblical Christianity that informed America for the first 75 years or so has long gone into eclipse but remnants remain. With continued immigration Christianity will be redefined just as the rest of the nation is redefined. Biblical Christianity accounts for the belief in limited Government, the belief if just wages and just prices, and the belief system of traditional Americans. As such, this ultimate goal of destroying the Historically Orthodox Christian faith, if accomplished, assures that the lesser proximate goals are achieved.

Love of Christ as well as love for our people, our culture, our Fathers and our generations yet unborn require us, as Christians, to fight.

³ For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders.

⁴ And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brasen vessels, and of tables.

⁵ Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands?

⁶ He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

⁷ Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

⁸ For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do.

⁹ And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.

We must realize here that no Old Testament texts call for anyone to wash hands before eating (but see what priests do in Exodus 30:18-21; 40:31). This may be an example of what was called “building a fence around the law.” The idea was that laws would be given that would prevent people from getting near to breaking a law just as a fence insures that no one gets near trespassing on private property.

These “traditions of men” that our Lord Christ keeps referring to here has to do with Jewish source of authority — “the Oral Law” —  which would eventually become “The Talmud.” The Talmud is a collection of Rabbinic writings from the first few centuries after Christ, however those Oral Law writings are based upon the kind of Oral traditions mentioned here and reach back long before the time of Christ. In the time of Christ, the Pharisees had already developed a system of Biblical interpretation of the Old Testament that allowed them to violate the letter and spirit of Biblical commandments while fulfilling them in a barely superficial way.

Here Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for adhering to legalistic man-made tradition while neglecting the law of God.

If we examine the Talmud, it becomes obvious that the Jews ignored Christ’s rebuke and continued down the path of wickedness. The Jews have progressed so far down this path that they no longer worship God, but instead worship their own techniques of hairsplitting argumentation. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the following episode from the Talmud (Baba Mezi’a 59b). In this passage, the Rabbi Eliezer is debating with his fellow rabbis about the cleanness of an oven. The other rabbis refuse to accept Eliezer’s argument, even after God himself speaks from heaven on Eliezer’s behalf:

The conviction was that since the Oral Torah had already been given at Mount Sinai; they need pay no attention to a Heavenly Voice, because Thou hast long since written in the Torah at Mount Sinai.

After this debate Rabbi. Nathan met (OT Prophet) Elijah and asked him: What did the Holy One, Blessed be He, do in that hour (when it was said “pay no attention to a Heavenly voice”)?

Elijah responded,  He (God)  laughed [with joy], he (God) replied, saying, ‘My sons have defeated Me, My sons have defeated Me.’

This mindset is codified in the Babylonian Talmud,

“Since God already gave the (Oral) Torah to the Jewish people on Mt. Sinai we no longer pay attention to heavenly voices. God must submit to the decisions of a majority vote of rabbis. —

BT Bava Metzia 59b

Rushdoony made it is life’s work to warn about this phenomena,

The self-righteous man makes his own will his law; he replaces the law of God with man-made traditions of his own devising.

~ R. J. Rushdoony

As it pertains to the value of the Oral Traditions, one OT Scholar could say,

The oral traditions of the ignorant rabbis …(give) not the sense of the Mosaic writings. Many of the laws of the Pentateuch would make a strange figure indeed, if we were to interpret them as the Pharisees did, whose exposition, according to Christ’s declaration, in many cases served to inculcate doctrines and precepts directly the reverse of what Moses had taught and commanded… even with regard to Jewish antiquities, prior to the Babylon captivity, the Talmud is … an impure source of information … a book … which appeals only to oral tradition can tell us nothing worthy of credit …”

Johann David Michaelis
Professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages
University of Gottingen
Commentaries on the Laws of Moses

*.) Talmudic Traditions of Men in our Current Laws

God’s law says, as quoted by Christ in Matthew’s Gospel,

Matthew 19:4And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE,5and said, ‘FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH ‘?

This is God’s law. It is the only law we know. It is the law that must be the soil out of which any other law must grow.

This is God’s law, but this is not man’s law. No, instead we are having talmudic type law foisted upon us. We are being forced to governed by the very traditions of men that the Lord Christ so severely denounces in this passage.

The limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples may long have seemed natural and just, but its inconsistency with the central meaning of the fundamental right to marry is now manifest. With that knowledge must come the recognition that laws excluding same-sex couples from the marriage right impose stigma and injury of the kind prohibited by our basic charter.

Anthony Kennedy
Obergefell vs. Hodges

In its simplest expression “The Kingdom of God” refers to the rule and reign of God consistent with His eschatological and redemptive intent to restore the Cosmos, thus destroying all competitive Kingdoms.

It should be seen as distinct from the general idea of God’s sovereignty though it includes the idea of God’s general sovereignty. The distinctness is found in the fact that this rule and reign of God is in direct connection to His triumphing over all other competing Kingdoms in the globalizing of His Redemption.

The essence of Jesus’ teaching ministry focuses on the theme of the kingdom of God. That this is so is seen in Mark’s Gospel in reference to how the Lord Christ characterized His ministry.

^{Mark 1:14 “}Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, ¹⁵ and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

The phrase “Kingdom of God” is found in sixty-one separate sayings in the Synoptic Gospels. Were we to count phraseology that is synonymous with the “Kingdom of God” our count of “Kingdom of God” language would increase to 85 references. Obviously this theme is of major import.

Indeed so important has this concept been that more than a few scholars have labeled it as the theme of the Bible. In other words they will read all of Scriptures with the “Kingdom of God” as the organizing theme by which Scripture is held together and rightly interpreted.

Illustration — Beethoven’s fifth symphony with it’s four note motif. Heard in every movement of the symphony save the 2nd. Not possible to understand Beethoven’s fifth apart from hearing how everything connects to that motif.

The Lord Christ never didactically defines the “Kingdom of God.” He will repeatedly use metaphor and similes to say what it is like. What is going on with the phraseology is that the Lord Christ is taking an already well known concept and is filling it with meaning.

So, our Lord did not invent the phrase, but built upon existing Old Testament teaching. A few examples,

Psalm 145:11 – 13 — ¹¹ They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom
    and tell of your power,
¹² to make known to the children of man your^[b] mighty deeds,
    and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
¹³ Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
    and your dominion endures throughout all generations.

Psalm 103:19 —  The Lord has established his throne in the heavens,
    and his kingdom rules over all.

Isa. 45:23 — “Turn to me and be saved,
    all the ends of the earth!
    For I am God, and there is no other.
²³ By myself I have sworn;
    from my mouth has gone out in righteousness
    a word that shall not return:
‘To me every knee shall bow,
    every tongue shall swear allegiance.’

Dan. 4:³ How great are his signs,
    how mighty his wonders!
His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
    and his dominion endures from generation to generation.

Zech. 14:9 — ⁹ And the Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day the Lord will be one and his name one.

This is far far from exhaustive. The point is that when the Lord Christ came saying “The Kingdom of God is at hand” the people listening would not have said … “What’s a ‘Kingdom of God.’

The importance of the idea is seen by the its usage at Key junctures

When John the Baptist comes preaching —   “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” ( Matt 3:2 );

Likewise, as we mentioned at the outset, the Lord Christ says much the same — Mk. 1:14-15 / Mt. 4:17 / Lk. 4:42-43

“The time has come… The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”

When Jesus teaches His disciples to pray He teaches them to ask — “thy kingdom come” ( Matt 6:10 )

In the Sermon on the Mount the Lord Christ in describing his people says of those poor in Spirit, of those persecuted for righteousness sake that “theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” a Jewish circumlocution for “Kingdom of God” — Mt. 5:3, 10.

Just before the Cross our Lord Christ can say during the Lord’s Supper,

“I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day whenI drink it anew in the kingdom of God”

It is used repeatedly in the parables of Jesus as we find it here.

Debate concerning “Kingdom of Heaven” & “Kingdom of God.”

When Dispensationalism came upon the scene, for years they tried to argue that there was a difference between the “Kingdom of Heaven,” and the “Kingdom of God.” In order to satisfy the demands of their system which require that the Jews get their own Kingdom the Dispensationalists said that the “Kingdom of God was here now in Spiritual form, but “the Kingdom of Heaven” is going to come after once the Millennium begins in our future. This future Kingdom would be physical and would include Christ having a throne in Jerusalem to rule from. However, they have had to retool this thinking since it has become clear that “Kingdom of Heaven” is used interchangeably with “Kingdom of God.”

The account of the rich young ruler in Matthew 19 includes Jesus’ words saying, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:23).  In the very next verse, Jesus exchanged the term “Kingdom of God” for “Kingdom of Heaven”, and said this, “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Matthew’s Gospel uses “Kingdom of Heaven” as opposed to “Kingdom of God” because it was written to a Jewish audience. Such an audience avoided using the word “God” out of a sense of such usage being inappropriate. In desiring to protect the name of God from all possible violation they used circumlocutions.

Now having laid this much out and having noted that the Kingdom of God in its essence is the rule and reign of God consistent with His eschatological and redemptive intent to restore the Cosmos we would note that the idea of the “Kingdom of God” remains a hotly debated subject in the Church in terms of how it should be exactly understood.

Some want to contend that the Kingdom of God is a political entity. Some want to contend that the Kingdom of God is only a Spiritual reality with its manifestation primarily identified with the Church. Some want to contend that God’s Kingdom is only a Future prospect. Some want to contend that the Kingdom of God is not future but is already present. While others will just say that Jesus was mistaken and wrong in His idea of a Kingdom of God.

We will spend our time this evening considering these various understandings.

As we consider the text this morning we see two points emphasized

I.) In the Parable of the Growing Seed what is Emphasized is God’s Intent and Ability To Grow His Kingdom apart from our Meddling

As we come to this we must keep in mind that this is a parable. A parable is different from an allegory. In a allegory there is a great deal of busyness where we seek to identify all the varied characters with their corresponding meaning.

An allegory is what the prophet Nathan gave to King David when rebuking him for the Bathsheba affair. Nathan, comes to David and tells him about a rich man with many flocks who takes a poor man’s only lamb to serve to his guests. Of course in Nathan’s allegory Bathsheba is the ‘lamb,” Uriah, her husband, represented the poor family with that one lamb. David was the rich villain who owned scads of sheep but  decided to steal the one loved lamb of the poor man in order to satisfy his desire. Allegory.

Here we have a parable. The parable doesn’t work the way a allegory does though it may have allegorical elements. What a parable is trying to do is to establish one main overarching point. And the point here in Mark 4 — a parable unlike many others inasmuch as Jesus doesn’t explain it — is that God grows the Kingdom absent of our involvement apart from sowing the word.

Taking the seed to be the Word of God, as in Mark 4:14, we can interpret the growth of the plants as the working of God’s Word to extend His reign and rule over men. By the growth of God’s Kingdom men are swept in. The fact that the crop grows without the sower’s intervention means that can God accomplish His purposes even when the sower is absent or unaware of what God is doing. The goal is the ripened grain. At the proper time, the Word will bring forth its fruit, and the Lord of the harvest (Luke 10:2) will be glorified.

The truth of this parable is well illustrated in the growth of the early church: “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow” (1 Corinthians 3:6). Just like a farmer cannot force a crop to grow, an evangelist cannot force spiritual life or growth on others.

2oth Century Dutch Theologian —  —Herman Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom

[The] absolutely theocentric character of the kingdom of God in Jesus’ preaching…implies that its coming consists entirely in God’s own action and is perfectly dependent on his activity. The kingdom of God is not a state or condition, not a society created and promoted by men (the doctrine of the ‘social gospel’). It will not come through an immanent earthly evolution, nor through moral action; it is not men who prepare it for God. All such thoughts mean a hopelessly superficial interpretation of the tremendous thought of the fullness and finality of God’s coming as king to redeem and to judge.

Now, this does not mean that we as God’s Kingdom people work contrary to  God’s Kingdom expansion. We do labor has God’s workman in God’s Kingdom but we do so realizing that God Kingdom expands because of God’s initiative, action and activity.  When the Kingdom grain has ripened it will be God who gets all the glory.

The point of the Parable of the Growing Seed: “The way God establishes His Word authority in the heart of His people is mysterious and is accomplished by Divine appointment apart from human agency.”  Ours is to be faithful in what God has called to in His Kingdom remaining confident that God’s already present Kingdom will come.

Actually, this ought to encourage us. It sometimes seems that the redemptive rule and reign of God is so diminished. It seems as if there is so much working against God’s rule and reign. Yet this parable reminds us that God will reap a harvest of His Kingdom expansion and He will do so simply because that is His intent. Nothing can stand in His way. The Kings of the earth may conspire against Him but God will have His Kingdom Harvest. No weapon formed against Him can overcome Him and His intent. No conspiracy can overcome His divine conspiracy to redeem the Cosmos. The inevitable growth of God’s Kingdom is as certain and as natural as a seed giving up its fruit once planted.

So … we should not despair, be discouraged, or despondent. God is growing His victory garden and we are part of that Kingdom garden and He has made us farmer citizens in His Kingdom.

II,) In the Parable of the Mustard Seed the Emphasis is on the inevitable vast expanse of the Kingdom

This likely has a couple OT referent points.

In Ezekiel 17:22-24, God plants a tiny cedar twig on a high mountain of Israel and that twig becomes a large and fruitful tree under whose branches every kind of bird will find shelter.¹  The birds there symbolize the nations that flock to Israel’s God on the glorious day of the Lord. This word-picture in both Ezekiel and Mark envisions the day when God’s sovereign and life-giving power will embrace the whole world–good news indeed!

In Daniel 4:21 the metaphor found here of “birds of the air may nest under its shade” is used to describe how the nations will find shade under a metaphorical Tree which stands for Nebuchadnezzar.  In both Daniel and here thre is more than a hint of  world wide dominion.  “The birds of the air may nest under its shade,” likely is pointing here to the fact that the Nations will come under the dominion of god’s Kingdom.

Don’t miss though the emphasis found in the idea that what becomes dominant starts out as minuscule.

It is easy to see this as the life of Christ. Christ is the Kingdom mustard seed that starts out tiny and then expands so that the Nations come it and find rest under His shade.

Application

1.) Whatever may appear to us now, we needs know that Christ’s Kingdom has the inevitability of victory.

Marxism taught and teaches,

“the victory of the proletariat [is] inevitable.

Meaning that Marxism will win out. S0me have opined that this plank of Marxism more than any other plank is what accounts for the success of Marxism’s spread.

But this was stolen from Biblical Christianity. It simply is the case instead that the victory of Christ and His Kingdom is inevitable.

The truth of this can sustain us in dark times … in persecution … in trial. Tears may last for the night but joy cometh in the morning.