Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 13:18-21, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), no. 49
- Date: Sunday, March 1, 2026 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Small Beginnings and Unexpected Growth
Small Beginnings and Unexpected Growth The world is full of inventions that people thought were not going to go anywhere, were not going to amount to anything, and then they just exploded. And I do not mean literally exploded. The world is full of inventions that literally exploded as well. But there are 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. But these are inventions now that I use every day. Could I function without them?
Yes. But they certainly help me. For example, I do not have to fly in here on Sunday morning and wonder, “Where did I put my sermon notes on Thursday or Friday?” They are right here. As a matter of fact, I can pull up just about every sermon I have ever preached.
The notes are right here in this little rectangle. It is amazing. We use these things every day. There are inventions that people thought would never amount to anything, and then they took off and became enormously successful.
We have seen examples of that, and that is the kind of thing that Jesus is explaining to those who are listening about the kingdom of God in Luke 13. We are 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 got your money’s worth. But I think there is plenty of meat just in these four verses—so much of it that some of it I will not even be able to get to until tonight.
We are going to look at what Jesus says about the kingdom. You have these inventions that people thought were not going to amount to anything, and some people even tried to stop these things because of the way they were going to change the world. That is right in line with the way last week we saw the ruler of the synagogue encounter the work Jesus was doing, healing that woman on the Sabbath. He saw the work that Jesus was doing and said, “No, that is 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 cannot contain it. You cannot stop it. The kingdom of God is bigger than what we can manage. ### What Is the Kingdom Like? We are going to look at these four verses today here in Luke 13, starting in verse 18.
What Is the Kingdom Like?
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?
Transformation from the Inside Out
It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened.’” Like I said, it is a short passage, but one that is packed with meaning. I want to start by pointing out that not everybody agrees on what this passage means. Obviously, any passage we look at, there is going to be somebody who disagrees with what it means. That is why there are other religions.
That is why there are other denominations. Quite honestly, that is why there are cults. But I mean even within the realm of what we would consider historical Christianity, teachers that we would look to and say, “These are reputable teachers,” do not all agree on what this passage means. 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. It shows why we have to dig in and understand what is going on in the story around it, why we need to understand the original languages—or at least consult the original languages—and why we need to be familiar with other passages of Scripture that might help us understand this one. 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 comparison about the mustard tree represent demonic influence. Or they would say that the leaven in the second comparison represents sin. Frequently, that is the case in Scripture. Frequently, when those images are used, that is what they point to.
But we have to dig into the context because if you take that approach, then what this ends up being is a warning to the disciples about the danger of false teachers. Now, that is true, and the Bible talks about the danger of false teachers. I do not believe that is how we are supposed to interpret those details, and context is the reason why. I do not have time this morning to get into why that is the case.
We will talk about that tonight. So if you are curious about that, I hope you will be here tonight at 6 o’clock, and we will talk about some of those details and why the context leads me to believe Jesus is just making a comparison here. The birds and the leaven are something they would have understood. If we do not look at it as though those birds represent demonic influence and that leaven 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 with the context of what has just been going on.
This is connected to the passage we looked at last week. Luke does not tell us that Jesus left the synagogue after this. Luke makes it sound like this is Jesus returning to what He was saying before He was interrupted by this ruler of the synagogue. It reads as a response to this man who wanted to keep Jesus’ work contained.
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 do not think the warning about false teachers is what Jesus is getting at here.
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?” I think that is in direct response to somebody who has just said, “No, no, we do not do that here. We are focused on our rules. We are focused on our traditions.
We are focused on appearances. We are focused on all the things that you should be doing that coincide with what we want, and You should not have healed that woman today.” As I pointed out last week, though, he does not say it directly to Jesus. He says it to the crowd: “Do not come here on the Sabbath day looking for healing when you can come any other day.” We talked about that last Sunday night. I did not realize that was on the table.
Why had he not been healing these people all along? It is because he could not. It is disingenuous to say, “Come here, you can get healed here any day.” No, the only reason people were getting healed is because that is where Jesus was. 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. 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 who wanted to keep it in a box. It is a rhetorical question. What we mean by rhetorical question is that when Jesus asks, “What is the kingdom of God like?” He is not asking because He does not know.
Correcting a Small View of the Kingdom
He is asking because they do not know, and He is going to tell them. ### Correcting a Small View of the Kingdom This is His opportunity to correct that man, to correct the other leaders of the synagogue, to correct anybody who agrees with him, and to instruct the people who are listening—including His own disciples—about what the kingdom is really like. It is not found where that man and those like him think it is found. The kingdom of God is not an orderly ritual. It is not a beautiful building.
It is not a manageable group of people who 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. There is nothing in Scripture that commands us to have a Christmas Eve service, and yet we do, and we tell people about Christ. That is an example of a tradition or a ritual. The lighting of the candle—there is 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 am thankful that we have a wonderful place to meet, a comfortable place to meet. But the building is not the kingdom of God.
It is a tool for that purpose. This is His opportunity to correct them. The kingdom of God can use those things, but it is not those things. Sometimes we get a similarly distorted view of God’s kingdom, and 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 have been guilty of that. We picture the things we are comfortable with. The problem is that when we fall into that mindset the way this ruler of the synagogue did, and we think, “No, the kingdom of God is just the things that I expect and I am comfortable with,” then I am imagining a version of the kingdom where I am the king. There is only one King in the kingdom, and you and I are not Him.
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. In each case, it is just a simple, relatable image that will help them understand. I have told you before, we are 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 have given you the example of the parable of the lost coin. “Okay, the woman represents this. The coin represents this.” I am with you. It is the Father searching for the lost because He values them.
But then I have heard Bible teachers get into, “The broom represents this, and the dirt that was swept out of the house represents this, and the floorboards represent…” No, we are getting away from the point of the story. I think that is 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 will get into that tonight, but the point here is just a story that they will understand. ### From Mustard Seed to Sheltering Strength 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 that it is like a mustard seed.
The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which a man took and threw into his garden. We almost get the image that he just discarded it. He threw it in his garden. I know when you are sowing, especially a large field at that time, you would kind of broadcast, you would kind of toss the seed.
But he had a mustard seed and threw it in his garden. That tells me there is just kind of an, “I am just letting it go” feel to it. He is not broadcasting a lot of seed. He is not planting this one deliberately.
He is 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. At one point, another place in the Gospels, Jesus said mustard, which is the smallest of all seeds.
Skeptics look at that and say, “There is stuff in South America that is way smaller.” Okay. So either the Bible is not true, or He is not God because He did not 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 have never heard of”? Can you imagine the questions they would have for Jesus?
When He says all, He means the things they would have encountered and planted. He is talking to agricultural people. It is the smallest of all the seeds they had in stock, the smallest of the seeds they were going to interact with. Again, context matters.
The mustard seed was the smallest seed they deliberately cultivated. But once it was planted, it grew into just about the biggest plant in their entire garden, their entire farm. I have 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 fifteen feet in diameter. That is enormous, especially for something that starts out so tiny.
That is the image for us to understand, that the kingdom is like this teeny-tiny seed. It is the smallest seed they were going to encounter on a regular basis. Even tossed out carelessly, it grows. We understand that seeds grow.
We understand that we still do not fully understand what it is that makes them grow. We understand the mechanics of it. We do not understand the why of all of it. Somehow this discarded seed grows into this enormous plant.
The reason He brings up the birds is that this tree grows so big and so strong that we do not just have birds landing on it. We have birds nesting in it because it is so secure and so stable and so able to support their weight. What we are talking about is not a house plant. It is 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. Some of you may see in your Bibles where the phrase about the birds is in all caps or small caps. That is because Jesus is quoting the Old Testament there in about three different places that use this same phrasing.
In each case, the Old Testament is comparing a kingdom like Egypt or Assyria or Babylon to a strong kingdom. But it says the same thing about the birds being able to nest in the tree. It is the idea of strength. 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. It starts from something so tiny, and it grows beyond all imagination. ### The Kingdom Started Small 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 is 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 who could lead armies. We would look for somebody strong. When God started the kingdom here on earth, He sent a tiny baby.
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. He 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?” Really, the Messiah is coming from there?
I think I have told you the story before that at my previous church, there was a little town called Bowlegs that was a suburb of Seminole, if you can imagine such a thing. 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. He said, “Where is your office located?” The guy said, “Well, we are here in downtown Bowlegs.” He said, “Where exactly?” He said, “Oh, by Bowlegs International Airport.” Bowlegs does not even have a Sonic, or at least they did not when we left. You look at a town like that and say, “Really?
If I told you the next president of the United States is just there in Bowlegs, Oklahoma,” nobody would believe it. Jesus came from a place where they said, “Nobody important like that is coming from Nazareth.” And He started His ministry with twelve random people—from our standpoint, random people. The kingdom started small in every conceivable way. But it has grown to be the mightiest kingdom in the history of the world.
It has 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 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 two thousand 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. I am 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 has grown far beyond what anybody expected possible. And it continues to grow.
I think it is a message of hope to them. I think it is a message of hope to us, because there are times when we are discouraged over the condition of our world. There are times when we are discouraged because maybe the work is not 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.
You and I get to be a part of that growth and that work to the glory of God. It is amazing. It should never cease to amaze us that God chooses to use us in the growth and advancement of His kingdom. It makes me think 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 was not producing fruit.
But that mustard tree, God’s kingdom, cannot help but grow. ### The Quiet Power of Leaven Then we have the second story in 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 have heard all kinds of bizarre explanations as to why it was three bags of flour. Again, there is so much stuff that we would be here all day, and tonight we will talk about these things. But the three bags of flour are 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 fifty pounds of flour. If you had fifty 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 is going to change the entire thing as a result.
That is 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.
You would think something that small, that amount, 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 continued to work its way through all of that dough, all of that flour, until it was all transformed. That is how the kingdom works.
The kingdom is outwardly strong like that mustard plant. But it is also inwardly transforming. It works its way through our hearts and through our lives. It works its way through society.
It is not something we can contain. It is 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 does not mean that you or I are unstoppable, but God’s work goes on. Maybe I should have done this at the beginning, but what is the kingdom? The kingdom is the rule of the King.
It is the sovereignty of Jesus Christ over His creation, and it is His sovereignty in the hearts of those who believe in Him. And it is unstoppable. ### The Gospel Transforms What It Touches We see the influence that His kingdom has had. We look at the things it has accomplished. In addition to the great things it has built, we look at the things it has transformed.
In the Western world today, the idea that we would enslave people is unthinkable. That was not the case two hundred years ago. Do you know why that changed? It was because of the influence of the gospel.
I know there were non-believers who were involved in abolition as well, but it was led by people like William Wilberforce in Britain and different Christian groups here in America who said, “No, this is wrong, and we are 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. 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. Each and every one of us in here, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, if you have 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 we desire change. What we live for changes. That is that yeast, that leaven, working its way through the flour.
And it cannot be stopped. Everything that the gospel touches is made better for it. “Well, what about all the evils of the church?” No, I am not saying that everybody who has ever claimed the name of Christ has done only good things. I did not say everybody who claims 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 am just going to say it—are better than churches that are not. That does not mean we are better than other people. That means the church functions better and lives up to what it is called to do. God’s kingdom transforms the world from the inside out.
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 are 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 is bigger than all of us.
So it is a reminder to us that God is in control. I have spent most of this time this morning talking to those in the room who are already believers in Jesus Christ. ### The Kingdom Can Transform You Let me just end on this thought: if you came here today as somebody who is maybe curious about Christianity, maybe curious about church, maybe you just came with a family member, maybe you are not sure why you are here, but you are here and you have 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 have 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 is possible, no matter where you have been, no matter what you have done, 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. Then He rose again from the dead three days later to prove it.
All that is 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 is 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 is 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 believe that Jesus paid for our sins in full and ask for what He offered. If you will do that this morning, that is when the transformation starts.
