Message Info:
- Text: Luke 13:18-21, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), No. 49
- Date: Sunday morning, March 1, 2026
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Transcript:
⟦Transcript⟧ The world is full of inventions that people thought weren’t going to go anywhere, weren’t going to amount to anything, and then they just exploded. And I don’t mean literally exploded. The world is full of inventions that literally exploded as well.
But things that just took off and became bigger than anybody could have imagined. There were people who thought the printing press was just a novelty, but it transformed the world. It may be the most important invention in the history of the world. Things like the telephone. People thought it was a novelty.
And now we all use it every day. The telegraph, the railroad, things like this. I remember the first time I saw an iPhone and thought, who in the world would ever want that? I was even more incredulous about an iPad. You know, but these are inventions now that I use every day.
Could I function without them? Yes.
But they certainly help me. For example, I don’t have to fly in here on Sunday morning and wonder where did I put my sermon notes on Thursday or Friday. They’re right here. As a matter of fact, I can pull up just about every sermon I’ve ever preached. The notes are right here in this little rectangle.
It’s amazing. We use these things every day. They have, there are inventions that people thought that’s never going to amount to anything. and then they’ve taken off and become enormously successful. We’ve seen examples of that, and that’s the kind of thing that Jesus in Luke 13 is explaining to those who are listening about the kingdom of God.
We’re going to look this morning at four verses. Just to give you a little insight into my thought process this week, I looked at it and thought, four verses, is that going to be enough? I want you to come in here Sunday morning and feel like you’ve got your money’s worth.
But I think there’s plenty of meat just in these four verses that some of it I won’t even be able to get to till tonight. But we’re going to look at what Jesus says about the kingdom. You’ve got these inventions that people thought they weren’t going to amount to anything.
And some people even tried to stop these things because of the way that they were going to change the world. And it’s right in line with the way last week we saw the ruler of the synagogue when he encountered the work that Jesus was doing, healing that woman on the Sabbath. Excuse me. He was healing that woman on the Sabbath, and the ruler of the synagogue saw the work that Jesus was doing and said, no, that’s not the way we do things here. He was trying to contain the work of God and trying to stop it.
But the point Jesus makes is that you can’t contain it, you can’t stop it. the kingdom of God, is bigger than what we can manage.
And so we’re going to look at these four verses today here in Luke 13, starting in verse 18. If you haven’t turned there with me, please go ahead and do so. And once you find it, if you’ll stand as we read together, if you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Luke 13, it’ll be on the screen where you can follow along there as well. Excuse me. Coughing was not a problem until I got up here.
Starting in verse 18, it says, so he was saying, what is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and threw into his own garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches. Again, he said, to what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened.
You may be seated. Like I said, short passage, but one that is packed with meaning. And I want to start off by pointing out that not everybody agrees on what this passage means. And obviously, any passage we look at, there’s going to be somebody who disagrees with what it means. That’s why there are other religions.
That’s why there are other denominations. Quite honestly, that’s why there are cults.
But I mean, even within the realm of what we would consider historical Christianity, teachers that we would look to as these are reputable teachers, we don’t all agree on what this passage means. And I harp a lot on context. Context is key when it comes to understanding the Bible.
This is one of the places that makes that clear, why we have to dig in and understand what’s going on in the story around it, why we need to understand the original, or at least consult the original languages, why we need to be familiar with other passages of Scripture that might help us understand this one. Because there are two different ways of looking at this in some of the details, and it changes the application of the passage substantially. There are Bible teachers that I enjoy and respect who would say the birds in the parable, the comparison about the mustard tree, that those birds represent demonic influence. Or they would say that the leaven in the second comparison, it represents sin. And frequently that’s the case in Scripture.
Frequently when those images are used, that’s what it points to. But we have to dig into the context because if you take that approach, then what this ends up is being a warning to the disciples about the danger of false teachers.
Now, that’s true, and the Bible talks about the danger of false teachers. I don’t believe that that’s how we’re supposed to interpret those details. And context is the reason why. I don’t have time this morning to get into why that’s the case. We will talk about that tonight.
So if you are curious about that, I hope that you’ll be here tonight at 6 o’clock. And we’ll talk about some of those details and why the context leads me to believe Jesus is just making a comparison here. And the birds and the leaven are something they would have understood.
Because if we don’t look at it as those birds represent demonic influence, and that leaven, it represents sin, then what we have is a story about the growth of the kingdom and the power of the kingdom, which I believe fits much better, again, with the context of what’s just been going on. This is connected to the passage we looked at last week. Luke doesn’t tell us that Jesus left the synagogue after this. Luke makes it sound like this is Jesus as he returns, almost as I was saying before I got interrupted by this ruler of the synagogue. And it reads as a response to this man who wanted to keep Jesus’ work contained.
And so what we come away with is not a warning about false teachers, but a message of hope about the strength of the kingdom and its ability to overcome any obstacle. Both of those are true, by the way. Both of those things we can support from elsewhere in Scripture.
But I don’t think the warning about false teachers is what Jesus is getting at here. So, what we have here are these two stories where He talks about the growth of the mustard plant, and He talks about the spreading of the yeast through all of the flour. but he starts out by asking in verse 18 what is the kingdom of god like and i think that’s in direct response to somebody who has just said no no we don’t do that here we’re focused on our rules we’re focused on our traditions we’re focused on appearances we’re focused on all the things that you should be doing that that coincide with what we want and you should not have healed that woman today. And as I pointed out last week, though, he doesn’t say it directly to Jesus. He says it to the crowd.
Don’t you come here on the Sabbath day looking for healing when you can come any other day. We talked about that last Sunday night. Like, I didn’t realize that was on the table. Why hadn’t he been healing these people all along? It’s because he couldn’t.
It’s disingenuous to say, come here, you can get healed here any day. No, the only reason people are getting healed is because that’s where Jesus is. There was no power in their traditions. There was no power in their rituals. The power was in the person of God standing before them.
And so with this man wanting to limit what Jesus does and when he can do it and how he can do it, Jesus says, let me tell you what the kingdom of God is really like. He starts with that question, what is the kingdom of God like for those that wanted to keep it in a box. It’s a rhetorical question. What we mean by rhetorical question is when Jesus asks, what is the kingdom of God like? He’s not asking because he doesn’t know.
He’s asking because they don’t know and he’s going to tell them. So he says, what is the kingdom of God like?
This is his opportunity to correct that man and to correct the other leaders of the synagogue, anybody that agrees with him, and to instruct the people who are listening, including his own disciples, about what the kingdom is really like, because it’s not found where that man and those like him think it’s found. The kingdom of God is not an orderly ritual. It’s not a beautiful building. It’s not a manageable group of people that stay subservient. To different extents, some of those things can be helpful in the kingdom.
There are traditions and rituals. We talked about this last Sunday night. There are traditions and rituals that actually point people to Jesus Christ. You know, there’s nothing in Scripture that commands us to have a Christmas Eve service, and yet we do, and we tell people about Christ. That’s an example of a tradition or a ritual.
The lighting of the candle, there’s nothing in Scripture that commands us to do that, but we do that as an object lesson to point people to Christ. Traditions and rituals can be beneficial to the kingdom of God, but they are not the kingdom of God in and of themselves. An orderly synagogue, a beautiful building. these can help. I’m thankful that we have a wonderful place to meet, a comfortable place to meet.
But the building is not the kingdom of God. It’s a tool for that purpose.
This is his opportunity to correct them. The kingdom of God can use those things, but it isn’t those things.
And sometimes we get a similarly distorted view of God’s kingdom, and we picture, when we think of God’s kingdom, we picture what we want to happen, what meets our expectations, what meets our preferences. I know I’ve been guilty of that. The things that we’re comfortable with. And the problem is when we fall into that mindset the way this ruler of the synagogue did, and we think, well, no, the kingdom of God is just the things that I expect and I’m comfortable with. The problem is that when I do that, I’m imagining a version of the kingdom where I’m the king.
There’s only one king in the kingdom, and you and I are not him. And so to correct this misconception that it was about what they were doing, twice Jesus offers a comparison. He gives them little stories that they would have understood and could have related to, and in each case it’s just a simple, relatable image that’s going to help them understand. And I’ve told you before, we’re going to have to be careful when we get into the parables and look at context and look at intent because I think we can really get bogged down in details too much to where we obscure the story. I’ve given you the example of the parable of the lost coin.
Okay, the woman represents this. Okay, the coin represents this. I’m with you. It’s the father searching for the lost because he values them.
But then I’ve heard Bible teachers get into, but the broom represents this, and the dirt that was swept out of the house represents this, and the floorboards represent… Okay, no, we’re getting away from the point of the story, and I think that’s what we can do a little bit if we try to assign too much meaning to things like the birds and the yeast. Again, we’ll get into that tonight, but the point here is just a story that they’ll understand, and so we go to verse 19, and we see that God’s kingdom grows from significant beginnings to sheltering strength. He says in verse 19, it’s like a mustard seed.
The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which a man took and threw into his garden, almost just kind of discarded it, is the image we get there. He threw it in his garden. I know when you’re sowing, you, especially a large field at that time, you would kind of broadcast, you’d kind of toss the seed, but he had a mustard seed and threw it in his garden. That tells me there’s just kind of a, I’m just letting it go. I’m not broadcasting a lot of seed.
I’m not planting this one deliberately. I’m just throwing it out there. This man took the seed, threw it into his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches. I think the reason Jesus uses this image for them is that mustard seed was the smallest seed they had.
Now, at one point, another place in the Gospels, Jesus said, mustard, which is the smallest of all seeds. And skeptics look at that and say, there’s stuff in South America that’s way smaller. Okay, okay. So, either the Bible’s not true or He’s not God because He didn’t know. Can you imagine if Jesus said to them, The mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds except maybe something found in Bolivia, which you’ve never heard of.
Can you imagine the questions that they would have for Jesus? When he says all, he means the things that they would have encountered and planted. He’s talking to agricultural people. The smallest of all the seeds you’ve got in stock. The smallest of the seeds you’re going to interact with.
Again, context. Context matters.
The mustard seed was the smallest seed that they deliberately cultivated. But once it was planted, it grew into just about the biggest plant in their entire garden, their entire farm. I’ve read different descriptions of the mustard plant, and there must be different species or cultivars, but some of these grow to be eight feet tall and about 15 feet in diameter. That is enormous, especially for something that starts out so tiny. And that’s the image.
That’s the image for us to understand, that the kingdom is like this teeny tiny seed. It’s the smallest seed they were going to encounter on a regular basis. And even tossed out carelessly, it grows.
And we understand that seeds grow. We understand that we still don’t fully understand what it is that makes them grow. We understand the mechanics of it. We don’t understand the why of all of it.
And somehow this discarded seed grows into this enormous plant. The reason he brings up the birds, this tree grows so big and so strong that we don’t just have birds landing on it. we have birds nesting in it because it’s so secure and so stable and so able to support their weight. What we’re talking about is not a house plant. It’s not a piece of greenery like this that the seed has grown into.
It is an enormous, stable, sheltering tree that has grown from almost impossibly small origins. And the kingdom of God is like that. That’s a reference to, Some of you may see in your Bibles where the phrase about the birds is in all caps or small caps. That’s because he’s quoting, Jesus is quoting the Old Testament there in about three different places that use this same phrasing. And in each case, they’re talking about the Old Testament is comparing a kingdom like Egypt or Assyria or Babylon to a strong kingdom.
But he says the same thing about the birds would be able to nest in the tree. It’s the idea of strength.
And somebody would have looked at these massive world empires like Babylon and Egypt and Assyria and said these were mighty nations. These were nations that at their height nobody wanted to tangle with because they were so strong. And Jesus is saying exactly the kingdom of God is just like that. That it starts from something so tiny and that it grows beyond all imagination. And the kingdom of God did start small.
When we look at the life of Jesus, the kingdom started almost impossibly small. If you and I were going to start a kingdom, we would do it completely differently from the way God did it. We would find a strong, imposing figure. It’s not going to be me. We would find somebody tall like Brother Rick.
We would find somebody with military experience, like Brother Robert. We would look for somebody imposing and that could lead armies. We would look for somebody strong. When God started the kingdom here on earth, He sent a tiny baby. And He sent a tiny baby to be born to impoverished parents who were a little bit social outcasts because of the circumstances of them not being married.
and people not understanding that this child was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and sent this king to be born in a barn, basically, and laid in an animal’s feeding trough, the kingdom of God started small. When Jesus began His ministry, He came out of Nazareth, which was a town so small that people said, even His own disciples said, can anything good come out of Nazareth? Like, really, the Messiah is coming from there? I think I’ve told you the story before that at my previous church, there was a little town called Bolegs that was a suburb of Seminole, if you can imagine such a thing. And one of my church members got called by a scammer who was trying to get his money, and the guy was playing along with him, and he said, well, where is your office located?
And the guy said, well, we’re here in downtown Bolegs. He said, well, where exactly? He said, oh, by Bolegs International Airport. Bolegs doesn’t even have a sonic or at least they didn’t when we left you look at a town like that and you say really if I told you the next president of the United States is just there in Bolegs, Oklahoma nobody would believe it Jesus came from a place that they said nobody important like that is coming from Nazareth and he started his ministry and he started with 12 random people from our standpoint random people the kingdom started small in every conceivable way but it grew to be the mightiest kingdom it has grown to be the mightiest kingdom in the history of the world it’s grown to be a kingdom where others look to it for strength and refuge look at all the things that God’s kingdom has built. In addition to churches in every nation, add to it the things that those churches do and have done.
You look at all of the hospitals that have been built by God’s people, and all of the hospices and the orphanages. You look at all of the universities and all of the schools. You look at all these things that people have done for the advancement of the kingdom. You look at all the feeding ministries. From massive multi-country enterprises to something as simple as what we do here, putting out lunches five days a week for people on the streets.
You look at it and you see that the influence of the kingdom of God for 2,000 years has overwhelmed and outlasted every other kingdom, every other empire that has ever existed. You look at the reach, you look at the power, you look at the strength of it. And I’m not talking about political power. You look at what the kingdom of God has accomplished. You look at the kingdom of God as it applies to his rule in the hearts of men.
you look at all the people whose lives have been transformed you look at all the people who will have eternal life in heaven with god because of that kingdom because jesus came to earth and because his message has gone out to the ends of the earth the kingdom started small but it’s grown far beyond what anybody expected possible. And it continues to grow. And I think it’s a message of hope to them. I think it’s a message of hope to us because there are times when we are discouraged over the condition of our world. There are times that we’re discouraged over maybe the work isn’t progressing as fast as we think it ought to.
We have to be reminded that God’s kingdom started out tiny, but nobody can stop its growth. And you and I get to be a part of that growth and that work. to the glory of God. It’s amazing. It should never cease to amaze us that God chooses to use us in the growth and the advancement of His kingdom.
And it makes me think just all of a sudden about how different that mustard tree is from the fig tree that we studied about two weeks ago, that with all the work of it, it wasn’t producing fruit. But that mustard tree, God’s kingdom, it can’t help but grow.
But then we’ve got the second story, verse 21, about the leaven, and we see that God’s kingdom transforms the world from the inside out. He says, the kingdom of God is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened. I’ve heard all kinds of bizarre explanations as to why it was three bags of flour. Again, something else we’ll get it. There’s so much stuff that we would be here all day.
That’s why tonight we’ll talk about these things. But the three bags of flour. There’s a large amount of flour in this story.
So much so that we might think a little bit of yeast is not going to be able to accomplish all of that. I think somebody said it would be approximately 50 pounds of flour. If you had 50 pounds of flour and you threw a tablespoon of yeast into it, you might not think that was enough to do the job.
But left long enough, that yeast is going to spread through the entire thing, and it’s going to change the entire thing as a result. And that’s what Jesus is telling us here.
The kingdom is like that yeast. The kingdom is not the flour.
The kingdom is the yeast that spreads throughout the world. And you would think something that small, that amount, that would never be able to accomplish all of these things.
But it works quietly sometimes and permeates through the whole thing until the whole thing is changed. The yeast continue to work its way through all of that dough, all of that flour until it was all transformed. And that’s how the kingdom works.
The kingdom is outwardly strong like that mustard plant. But it’s also inwardly transforming. And it works its way through our hearts, through our lives. It works its way through society. It’s not something we can contain.
It’s not something we can control. The kingdom is an unstoppable force. We need to hear this for those moments when we lose hope, when we get discouraged.
God’s kingdom is an unstoppable force. It doesn’t mean that you or I are unstoppable, but God’s work goes on. I’m going to back up here. maybe I should have done this at the beginning, to really just what is the kingdom?
The kingdom is the rule of the king. It’s the sovereignty of Jesus Christ over his creation, and it’s his sovereignty in the hearts of those who believe in him. And it’s unstoppable. we see the influence that his kingdom has had we look at the things that it has accomplished in addition to the great things it’s built we look at the things that it has transformed in the western world today the idea that we would enslave people is unthinkable that was not the case 200 years ago do you know why that changed it was because of the influence of the gospel I know there were non-believers that were involved in abolition as well but it was led by people like William Wilberforce in Britain and different Christian groups here in America that said no this is wrong and we’re not going to misuse the Bible to try to justify it.
Christianity transformed the Western world. Christianity transformed the Roman Empire. For all the talk about how Christianity demeans women and steals rights, Christianity elevated women to a status they had never had in the Roman Empire. Christianity, the influence of Christianity, gave rights to slaves in the Roman Empire.
Christianity did away with the idea that a father could just have his children killed for whatever reason. Christianity did away with the idea that if babies were born with defects, we would just leave them out somewhere to die from the elements.
Christianity transformed the conscience of nations as the gospel transformed the hearts of people in those nations. And each and every one of us in here, if you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, if you’ve been born again, you have experienced that in your own life as your heart has been transformed from the inside out. As we grow closer to Jesus, the things that we value, the priorities of our lives, the things that we think, they change. The things that we desire, they change. What we live for, it changes.
That’s that yeast, that leaven working its way through the flour. And it can’t be stopped. Everything, everything that the gospel touches is made better for it. Well, what about all the evils of the church? No, I’m not saying that everybody who’s ever claimed the name of Christ has done only good things.
I didn’t say where everybody, you know, claim the name of Christ. I said where the gospel has touched it. Everything the gospel has touched has been made better. Families that are impacted by the gospel are made better. Marriages that are touched by the gospel are strengthened.
Churches that are driven by the gospel, I’m just going to say it, are better than churches that aren’t. That doesn’t mean that we’re better than other people. That means the church functions better and lives up to what it’s called to do.
God’s kingdom transforms the world from the inside out. And so for believers, this should reassure us that God is in control and His kingdom is undefeated. Even when we find our circumstances discouraging, even when that conversation is just not going the way we think it ought to go, even when we’re not seeing the progress with this person that we think we ought to see, even when we find a closed door here, the kingdom is still undefeated, and the kingdom is still undefeatable. And just as a personal note, that also reminds me that the kingdom is not about me.
The kingdom is bigger than any of us, and it’s bigger than all of us. So it’s a reminder to us that God is in control. And I’ve spent most of this time this morning talking to those in the room who are already believers in Jesus Christ. Let me just end on this thought, that if you came here today as somebody that maybe you’re curious about Christianity, maybe you’re curious about church, maybe you just came with a family member, Maybe you’re not sure why you’re here, but you’re here and you’ve never trusted Jesus Christ.
This is a reminder that His kingdom can transform you. No matter how far from God you are, no matter what you’ve done in your past, no matter all the things that need to be cleaned up, just like that yeast is powerful enough to work its way through a massive pile of flour, that gospel is powerful enough to work its way through your life and permeate and change everything. It’s possible no matter where you’ve been, no matter what you’ve done, it’s possible today for you to have a clean slate with God, to have peace with Him, and to have eternal life. Not because you work for it, not because you earn it, but because Jesus Christ came and took responsibility for my sin and for yours.
Jesus who had no sin of his own to pay for came to earth so that he could be nailed to the cross and shed his blood and die to pay for your sin and then he rose again from the dead three days later to prove it and all that’s left for you and me to do is not to try to earn it not to try to be better not to try to work harder and do all those things, all the rituals, all that’s left for us to do is believe that we are sinners who are separated from God, to believe that Jesus died to pay for our sin and rose again, and that He’s the only one, and then ask for the forgiveness that He purchased. Without having a backup plan, without trying to do it some other way, without putting any trust in ourselves, simply to believe that Jesus paid for our sins in full, and ask for He offered. And if you’ll do that this morning, that’s when the transformation starts.
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