Sermon Bible Commentary
Matthew 13:31-32
The Grain of Mustard Seed.
There are very few of our Lord's parables that can be illustrated so fully, few that get so clear a confirmation from all experience, as this. And yet to accept the principle and really live by it requires the very faith of which the parable speaks.
I. Look at history, and see how true the doctrine is, not only of the kingdom of heaven, but of every other power that has really held sway among men. In almost all cases the great, the permanent work has been done, not by those who seemed to do very much, but by those who seemed to do very little. Our Lord's founding of the Church was but the most striking instance of a universal rule.
II. There are two ways in which great men rule other men: they either sway the masses of men by an irresistible influence; or they impress on a few, either by personal intercourse or by writings, the stamp of their own character, their own thoughts. Some men have worked in both ways. But our Lord chose only one, and that the one that would seem the most obscure, the most uncertain. He taught the multitudes; but His chief aim was certainly not to impress them. His work was to stamp the truth upon a few; but to stamp it so deep that nothing could afterwards efface it. When He did this, what was He doing? He was sowing the seed; the seed whose fruit was not yet, whose perfect fruit was not to be gathered for many centuries; the seed which seemed small and perishable, but was certain to grow into a great tree. And so too has all the greatest work been done both before and after, not often by producing immediate results, but by sowing seeds. So have sciences all grown, not from brilliant declarations to the world, but from patient labour and quiet thought, and language addressed to the few who think. So has all growth in politics always begun in the secret thoughts of men who have found the truth, and have committed it to books or to chosen learners. The true powers of human life are contained in those seeds, out of which alone comes any real and permanent good.
Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons,2nd series, p. 138.
The Fitness of Christianity for Mankind.
Its extraordinary power of easy expansion, its power of adapting itself to the most diverse forms of thought, is one strong proof of the eternal fitness of Christianity for mankind. This is our subject.
I. It has these powers, first, because of its want of system. Christ gave ideas, but not their forms. We have one connected discourse of His, and there is not a vestige of systematic theology in it. It seems as if Christ distinctly chose indefinite-ness in certain parts of His teaching, in order to shut out the possibility of any rigid system of Christian thought. The original want of system in Christ's teaching ensures its power of expansion, and that fits it for the use of the race, now and hereafter.
II. But if this were all, it would prove nothing. There must be a quality in a religion destined to be of eternal fitness to men which directly appeals to all men, or else its want of system will only minister to its ruin. And if that quality exist, it must be one which we cannot conceive as ever failing to interest men, and therefore as expanding with the progress of man. We find this in the identification of Christianity with the life of a perfect man. What is Christianity? Christianity is Christ the whole of human nature made at one with God. Is it possible to leave that behind as the race advances? On the contrary, the very idea supposes that the religion which has it at its root has always an ideal to present to men, and therefore always an interest for men. So the ideal manhood which is at the root of Christianity ensures to it a power of expanding with the growth of the race; and this power is one proof at least of the eternal fitness of Christ's teaching for mankind.
III. The third quality in it which ensures its expansiveness is that it has directly to do with the subjects which have always stirred the greatest curiosity, awakened the profoundest thought, and produced the highest poetry in man. And these are the subjects which are insoluble by logical analysis, unknowable by the understanding: What is God and His relation to us? Whence have we come? Whither are we going? What is evil, and why is it here? Do we die or live for ever? It is because Christianity as taught by Christ acknowledges these questions as necessarily human; it is because it promises that those who follow the method of Christ and live His life shall solve them; that Christianity belongs to men, is calculated to expand, to suit men in every age.
S. A. Brooke, Christ in Modern Life,p. 1.
The Mustard Seed.
I. The kingdom of heaven in the worldis like a mustard seed sown in the ground, both in the smallness of its beginning and the greatness of its increase.
II. The kingdom of heaven in the human heartis like a mustard seed in the smallness of its beginning and the greatness of its increase.
W. Arnot, The Parables of our Lord,p. 101.
(with Mark 4:30; Luke 13:18)
The Mustard Seed.
I. Not Christ's doctrine merely, nor yet even the Church which He planted upon earth, is this grain of mustard seed in its central meaning. He is Himself at once the mustard seed and the man that sowed it. He is the mustard seed; for the Church was originally enclosed in Him, and unfolded itself from Him, having as much oneness of life with Him as the tree with the seed in which its rudiments were all enclosed, and out of which it grew; and the Sower, in that by a free act of His own, He gave Himself to that death whereby He became the author of life unto many.
II. This seed, when cast into the ground, is "the least of all seeds" words which have often perplexed interpreters, many seeds, as of poppy or rue, being smaller. Yet difficulties of this kind are not worth making; it is sufficient to know that "small as a grain of mustard seed" was a proverbial expression among the Jews for something exceedingly minute. The Lord, in His popular teaching, adhered to the popular language. And as the mustard seed so has been His kingdom. Herein it differs from the great schemes of this world; these last have a proud beginning, a shameful and miserable end; towers as of Babel, which threaten at first to be as high as heaven, but end a deserted, misshapen heap of slime and bricks; while the works of God, and most of all His chief work the Church, have a slight and unobserved beginning, with gradual increase and a glorious consummation. So is it with His kingdom in the world, a kingdom which came not with observation; so is it with His kingdom in any single heart; there, too, the word of Christ falls like a slight mustard seed, seeming to promise little, but effecting, if allowed to grow, mighty and marvellous results.
III. There is prophecy, too, in these words. Christ's kingdom shall attract multitudes by the shelter and protection which it offers, shelter, as it has often proved, from worldly oppression, shelter from the great power of the devil. Itself a tree of life whose leaves are for medicine and whose fruit for food, all who need the satisfying of their soul's hunger, all who need the healing of their soul's hearts, shall betake themselves to it.
R. C. Trench, Notes on the Parables,p. 107.
References: Matthew 13:31; Matthew 13:32. R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions,p. 128; S. A. Brooke, Christ in Modern Life,Philippians 1:17; A. B. Bruce, Parabolic Teaching of Christ,p. 90; J. R. Macduff, Parables of the Lake,p. 102.