The Power of Small Things

She's getting better and better, huh? That's fantastic. That's a powerful, powerful message of Jesus Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Thank you so much. I realize I misspoke. We have coffee before church. I don't know. Sorry, I confused everybody on that. After church, they just need a little bit of time to set up, and that's when you can't go in the kitchen. Sorry about that. Not perfect here. So yes, we have coffee before church, so just want to make sure you know that. Now, I'm going to need my little... In Matthew 13, Jesus Christ shares seven parables concerning the kingdom of God. And each of these seven parables was given as a way of explaining what the kingdom of God would be like. In fact, the passage in the book of Matthew is really the definitive set of sort of parables around what the kingdom will be like. And if you want to turn over there now you can. We're going to make reference to that in a moment. You know, he talks about the pearl of great price, and he talks about leaven, and he talks about this dragnet, this fishing thing. And you know, when you go through Matthew 13, what you realize is that the kingdom of God is so different than anything we can even imagine today, that Christ had to sort of grasp for all these different ways of describing it in Matthew 13. And each parable is not the definitive description, but it really provides some insight into what this thing is going to be like. And today I want to focus on one of those parables, which is the parable of the mustard seed.

And it's the only parable in this section that's repeated in Matthew and in Luke. So it was something that really stood out to the early disciples that they would remember this parable. And I want to go through three points around this parable that I hope will be helpful. The first one is, why would Jesus Christ even compare the kingdom of God to this mustard seed? And two, you know, how is the theme of the mustard seed applied within Scripture to kind of give us another insight into its usage? And then finally, how do we individually, and as a church down through history, consider this parable as we move forward in our walk of faith? And today, the title of today's message, which is listed up here on the screen, is the power of small things. The power of small things. And I hope today's message will help us think differently about ourselves and about the kingdom of God as we consider this parable. So go over to Matthew 13, and let's begin with this first point of why would Jesus Christ say the kingdom of God would be like a mustard seed? I mean, what's kind of up with that here? So let's go to Matthew 13 and verse 31, and let's read Matthew 13, 31 and 32, and see what Jesus says here. He says, another parable He put forth to them, saying, the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all seeds, which when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches. Now, I've got a picture of a mustard seed up here so you can kind of see that indeed, you know, if you think about something that you would just hold in your hand like that, right, that's what's up there, that's a pretty small seed, right? And that indeed is among the smallest of all the seeds that you're going to find.

And so the standard interpretation of this parable is that the kingdom of God starts out really, really, really small like this seed, and then it grows into something that's very large, you know, like a tree. And this interpretation is discussed fairly widely on the internet. I found this on the internet. This is a picture of a mustard tree, sort of grown full-size. This is a picture drawn by Mike Meyers. It's kind of listed down there, kind of hard to see. And you'll see it's got a large trunk and well-formed branches here, and there's sort of birds that are nesting in this tree. And so the standard interpretation is you've got this really, really small seed, and then it grows into this enormous tree. And that means that the kingdom of God starts out very, very small, and then it grows into something really huge.

And that's kind of what you'll find kind of out there. Now, you know, if Jesus wanted to talk about something that was going to be really, really big, like a big tree, a cedar of Lebanon might have been a little bit of better choice. These are the pine cones, or I should say cones, of a cedar of Lebanon.

You can see that, you know, this would be more like the size of your hand, maybe a little bit smaller. So clearly this is not a tiny, tiny seed. But, you know, if you think about what a cedar of Lebanon looks like when it's full grown, I mean, it's enormous. This is a cedar of Lebanon. Here you see a pretty big trunk listed there.

A cedar of Lebanon can grow to be 120 feet tall, and the trunk can be nine feet in diameter. This can be a huge tree. And the cedar of Lebanon was very well known at the time of Jesus. So he could have clearly used the analogy of a little pine cone, you know, kind of less the size of your hand, that grows into a 120-foot tall tree with a nine-foot diameter trunk. And, you know, he could have gotten across that impression, right, of the kingdom starts small, and then it grows into this impressive, massive tree, right?

Now, the, you know, the Sequoia cone wouldn't have been known by, you know, people at the time of Jesus Christ. It existed, right, but it wasn't known. This is a Sequoia cone. It's actually pretty small, too. And a Sequoia cone, well, it grows a really big tree, right?

So a Sequoia turns into a tree that's 300 feet tall. In fact, it's the largest tree on the planet. And you see some pictures here. These are men, right, that are scaling this tree. The Sequoia tree can be 25 feet in diameter, right? So we're talking like this, you know, this, if you go up to Yosemite, you see some of these.

And these, these little branches, these branches are like six feet in diameter, right? You can't even get your arms around those branches. That's the kind of...so if if Christ wanted to get across the analogy of something that starts small and then really turns into something massive, you know, he could have used sort of certain other analogies.

So so again, you know, is this what a mustard tree looks like? Is this a fair representation of what a mustard tree looks like? Now it's hard to know exactly what this thing looks like, because, you know, it was 2000 years ago and, you know, things do change.

But, you know, a mustard tree actually doesn't look like those pictures. This is actually a mustard tree, okay? This is a real mustard tree. Now a mustard tree is basically an herb, okay? So think about your gut, you know, you've got a garden and you've got celery and tomatoes and, you know, oregano and you've got, you know, romaine lettuce and stuff. This is something that you would plant in a planter bed, okay?

And if you plant this in a planter bed, you'd be a little, you know, bothered to have a 10-foot thing growing in your planter bed, but that's what can happen with a mustard herb. It can actually grow quite tall. This one is 10 feet tall. You see a man standing next to it, but this is about as big as a mustard plant is going to get.

There's another one over here. This is a dense mustard tree. This one is actually kind of, you know, more thick and kind of growing out, and this, I think, gives us a pretty good idea of why Jesus would say what he would say about a mustard tree, because you can see here that it actually gets pretty dense, especially down in here, where birds can come and actually make a nest in here, which, I mean, how many birds nest in a tomato plant, you know?

I mean, it doesn't happen, right? Let's go nest in the oregano. I mean, you know, it's, you don't have birds nesting in a planter box, typically. They come and eat your vegetables. They like that, but they don't, they don't, you're not going to nest in there. So this is an unusual plant in that it starts out really small, and it actually grows into something quite surprising for an herb, as it is. So it starts out very, very tiny, the least of all the seeds of the garden, and it grows to be twice the size of a man, with large and thick enough that birds can actually nest in its branches.

So really, is the point of this that starts out very, very small and then becomes enormous? Right? I mean, if it wanted to be enormous, it's, this does not look like a cedar of Lebanon, right? This is not a cedar of Lebanon. So let's look over in Matthew 17, verse 14, because really what we find more is that Christ is talking about something that's very, very small, and then becomes something unexpected.

Sort of quite amazing for what you would expect in an herb garden. We'll go over in Matthew 17, and in verse 14, this is the story of a healing by a young boy, and Christ makes reference to the mustard seed again here. He says, "...and when they had come, the multitude a man came to him, kneeling down to him, saying, Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic, and suffers severely, for he often falls into the fire and often into the water." So he has these seizures, right? He's having seizures, and when these seizures come, it's uncontrollable, and so he falls in, you know, they're cooking, or he falls into the water, and so forth. And so, I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him. And then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to me. And Jesus rebuked the demon, and he came out of him, and the child was cured from that very hour.

And then verse 19, then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, why could we not cast him out? And Jesus then says in verse 20, so he said to them, "...because of your unbelief, for assuredly I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, Move from here and there, and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you." And so, it's interesting that Christ would use the analogy then, again, of a mustard seed really with a focus on the fact that it was very, very small.

Now, this is a picture I took as my wife in the foreground. This is the Montblanc mountain range, the Montblanc is the highest mountain in Western Europe. It's about just under 16,000 feet, and you can walk along there. We took an excursion here to the feast this year, and you can imagine, right? I mean, here's my wife, right, down here, kind of give you some perspective, and here's a mountain, okay? And if we had the faith, even the tiniest speck of faith, we could say to this mountain be moved into the sea. I mean, you look at that, like, that's big, right? Levitate this thing and move it over to the Mediterranean and drop it in. And that's what Jesus is saying, just the tiniest bit of pure, godly faith, you could move mountains with that. And so, Jesus seems to focus here on just the smallness of that mustard seed. And really, when we think about what he's describing here, what he's describing is really the importance of smallness, and not misjudging smallness, because even though it might be small, we may judge it to be insignificant or unimportant or not really going to amount to anything, but an actual fact that small, tiny mustard seed amounts to something quite amazing in a garden that you wouldn't expect, that birds could actually come and nest in an herb. So that's really where it seems Christ is going with this analogy of why he's describing the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is something that starts out very, very, very small, and everybody might misjudge it, and then it's going to turn into something amazing. Now, how is this theme of the mustard seed, and this is my second point here, how is this theme of the mustard seed sort of consistently represented in Scripture?

And again, I think if we should consider that if Christ wanted his disciples and those who would follow after him to focus on the size of things, if he wanted to focus on size, then, you know, I think there might be a little bit of a problem there, because no matter how small with Jesus Christ and God the Father direction, even small things can grow and surpass anybody's expectation. And when you stick back and consider the theme of small beginnings, little, small, least, that's not what our society is about, right? Our society is about bigger, better, faster, right? That's what our society is about. But Jesus is talking about little and small and least. That seems to be what sort of he talks about consistently. If you think about Gideon, God didn't want Gideon to have a large army. He wanted him to have a small army.

I mean, that doesn't make any sense, does it? He wanted him to have a small army, because he wanted to get in to know that it was God's power that would win the battle, not his own power.

Samuel here, we've got sort of some representations of Samuel and Saul here. So, Samuel was chastised Saul. You can make the note there. I'm not going to go there, but in 1 Samuel 15, 17, Samuel chastises Saul by telling him that God called him when he was little in his own eyes. God liked that. He liked the fact that Saul was little in his own eyes, and that's how God found him. In fact, Saul was so sort of intimidated by the whole thing about being king that when they went to, you know, go find him, to anoint him king, he was hiding with the bags. He was kind of hiding in a back room, kind of with bags, kind of piled on top of him, so you couldn't find him.

That's where Saul was in the beginning, and God's like, I like that. I like the fact that you think about yourself that way, because you'll trust in me to be powerful and not in your own strength. Jesus said in Luke 9, verse 46 and 48, whoever receives this little child in my name receives me. For he who is least among you will be great. See, least, little, small. God seems to be really interested in that, which is totally counterintuitive. And so when he's describing the kingdom of God, he's saying, little, least, small. The disciples wanted an army to come in and take over the region from the Romans and establish a government. They weren't thinking little, least, and small. They were thinking big swords, big bodies, armor, lots of troops. And Jesus was not getting that across. And there's lots of examples like that in Scripture we could go through, but I think you begin to get the theme of what we're talking about. In fact, I think sometimes we can confuse the end result of size and strength with blessings, can't we? So we think, oh, well, you know, lots of money, blessings, right? Big this, lots of blessings. Well, I mean, there is, you know, there are blessings that come from that, and we know that God does bless in that way, yet God seems very comfortable with fragility. God seems very comfortable with fragility. He's okay with fragility, right? As long as it's our fragility looking to Him for strength. Look over to Revelation 3 verse 8. Revelation 3 verse 8, let's see an example of God being completely comfortable with little or small or fragility. Revelation 3 verse 8, speaking to the church in Philadelphia, and how many times have we read this scripture? How many times there was a, you know, very famous individual, Herbert Armstrong, who read this scripture many, many times. It says here, I know your works. See, I have set before you an open door, and no one can shut it, for you have a little strength. Have kept my word, and have not denied my name.

You have a little strength, and I'm okay with that, because I'm going to make up the difference in your little strength. So trust in me, and not in your own self, and amazing things will happen. That's what the kingdom of God is all about. Look over in Zechariah 4. We'll see another time where God was okay with being little.

Zechariah 4, verse 8. This is a reference to the rebuilding of the temple. We had a sermon out on this recently in Zechariah 13. It says, Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this temple. His hand shall also finish it, and then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. For who has despised the day of small things?

I think we've read that one before, right? Who has despised the day of small things? For these seven rejoice to see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel. They are the eyes of the Lord, which scan to and fro throughout the whole earth. See, the first temple was filled with gold and silver and the finest precious stones. It reflected a time of great wealth in the time of Israel. The second temple was quite small by comparison with this. I've got a diagram up here of the two temples. This was the first temple, Solomon's temple, and this is Herod's temple, which was built afterwards. Now there was something in between here in terms of what they were doing. You can see here that this is the first and second temple. It wasn't as grand. It didn't have all the gold, but God's purpose was nonetheless being fulfilled. Let's look over here in verse 3. Let's go over to Nehemiah 4 verse 3.

Let's see, starting in verse 2. And he said to me, What do you see? So I said, I am looking, and there's a lampstand of solid gold and a bowl on top of it, and on the stand seven lamps, with seven pipes to the seven lamps, and two olive trees by it, one by night in the bowl, and so forth.

And so there was this sort of, you know, what is it going to look like, and how is it going to stand, and what is this going to mean? And he's trying to sort of get across to Zachariah here that the temple was going to be built by God. It was going to be built, and it was going to fulfill God's purpose. And sometimes we may feel like, you know, sort of what we do doesn't really matter. It doesn't have any weight. It's so small, and we're so insignificant, and we're worried about things in our own lives and how we can be used by God. But sometimes God is perfectly fine with that, as long as we don't make that an excuse for not doing anything. Right? Whatever little strength we have, God is there to take it and amplify it, and then for us to give him the glory for what he did through us and not through our own strength. And that seems to be over and over and over again the message that we get, that God is okay with small and fragile because he's going to make it into something incredible. Look over in Haggai 2 verse 3. I think I've got that up here.

Haggai 2 verse 3. That's just a couple verses back.

I went past it myself. It's right after Zephaniah, and right before Zechariah. It's just one book before. Zechariah 2 verse 3 says, Who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory?

Right? Who remembers that incredible temple? Well, it wouldn't have been many. And how do you see it now? In comparison with it, is it not in your eyes as nothing? It just felt like nothing. I mean, you know, look at this thing. There's not the gold, and there's not all the fancy things that are in there before. But Haggai asks the question, is it large? Is it impressive? Is it amazing? But in actual fact, it was accomplishing God's purpose. God's purpose would be accomplished by that second temple. And many in this room can tell stories of how many people used to come to church in the San Francisco Bay Area. Right? I mean, we had more than a thousand people here.

Right? We had San Francisco, and Oakland, and San Jose, and Aptos, Palo Alto, and was there a church in Fairfield? And you know, I mean, on and on it goes. Right? And then the Central Valley. Right?

And what are we here? You know, a hundred? We're a tithe. We're a tithe of what used to be used to be here before. And sometimes we can feel that our size and strength is as nothing.

Compared to how we used to be. But here we are, doing God's work. And there has been growth, and there has been development, and there has been maturity, and there has been overcoming, and there have been lives changed. I know that. Because I lived it. Right? If I think back, I was baptized in 1986. Right? 32 years ago. Hardly seems like it's gone that long. But 32 years ago, things were very different in the Church of God. Now, we have the same doctrines. Right? We believe the same things. I think if you take our fundamental belief, it looks pretty similar to what was written in the 30s. Right? I mean, we really haven't changed doctrinally. But we have grown tremendously in how we understand many administrative things and how we understand these doctrines that God has revealed.

You know, 32 years ago, we used to speak a lot about government. Remember that? And now what do we speak about? We speak about servants who lead. Right? That's what we speak about. We have a different understanding of how to govern. Because we serve. And we serve, and that's how we lead.

You know, back then we spoke about how many churches we would have in five years. I remember hearings. In five years, we're going to have this many churches, and it's going to be this big, and we're going to need to hire this many ministers. Right? That's what we used to speak about. But today, we speak about understanding our spiritual gifts and how we can serve one another through those spiritual gifts. I know the ladies' friendship circles talking about spiritual gifts. Right? We talk about spiritual gifts and how we can use those to serve the body and to serve our communities. Back then, we put ministers, unfortunately, sort of in a place where, you know, there was sort of this sort of, well, they must be perfect. Right? And now, right, we labor among the church. Right? We're laboring alongside, all looking to Jesus Christ as the head of the church.

Thirty-two years ago, we spoke about God's law with an exacting detail. Right? Reminiscent of tithing on the mint and the anise in the coming. Right? But now we speak about the weightier matters of the law. Right? Judgment, mercy, and faith without leaving the others undone. Right? We're not neglecting those things, just like Jesus said. Don't neglect tithing. Right? Why is it that nobody tithes? Jesus Christ himself said tithe. mainstream Christian churches don't tithe, but he said tithe himself, the words of Jesus Christ. You know, blue letter, red letter Bible. Right? Him very, we don't neglect those other things, but we think about these things in a larger context of what is God's intention and where is he going with this. And so, yes, we're smaller. Right? But that's what the kingdom of God is all about. It's about small, little, fragile, because we give God the glory through what we do. And it's not size or numbers that matter. And that brings us to the third point here. How should we individually and as a church down through history consider the parable of the mustard seed as we think about our trajectory forward, as we think about our individual futures and where we're going. Now, we know from Matthew 16 that...

Let's go over to Matthew 16, verse 18. Matthew 16, verse 18.

It says here that... And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. We've discussed the fact that Jesus Christ built the church on himself and not on Peter. And there's a word play with stone and boulder. And then it says, And the gates of Haiti shall not prevail against it. The gates of Hades, that is, death itself, will not prevail against us. Now, from Jesus to the apostles to us today, it is all about being faithful, fruitful, and generally small. Is the church spoken of in Matthew 16 the great church that arose victorious from the persecutions of the Roman Empire? Right? Is it the church that we saw the emperor Constantine converted and Christianity become a glue that held the Roman Empire together? Right, I've got a few pictures up here. Right? Is this the church? Does this church worry about the gates of hell prevailing against it? This thing is its own nation state, okay? These guys are doing okay.

These guys are doing okay, right? I don't think that Jesus would have to say that if there were going to be two billion Christians on the planet with their own nation. Okay? With their own sort of pile of gold and treasures. We were talking about the Vatican last night and what an amazing place that is. I don't think Jesus Christ would need to say this unless, as a church, we needed to hear it. Right? Because if, as a church, we were like, wow, like, okay, how are we going to keep going? Right? How are we going to keep moving ahead? You know, like, maybe we're not going to be able to put... No, God doesn't want us to think this way. He says the gates of hell are not even going to prevail against you. That's how you're going to continue. Because you are trusting in me.

What we see is that the size and scope of God's church has never been large. It's never been large.

It has been the story of growth and then contraction and persecution. The lives of our spiritual ancestors, like their records, have mostly been wiped out. In fact, most of what we know about our spiritual ancestors were written by their conquerors and not by them themselves, because their actual writings got kind of wiped out because they were considered heretics and those things shouldn't remain. Their beliefs were contrary to established norms. And so, from Jesus to the disciples, down through history, we always just see hints or traces of God's church.

The first one I put up here, I think I'll put up there, are the Paulicians.

The Paulicians were in the 7th century. Fred Konybear, in his book The Key of Truth, discusses the Paulicians. Many of you might remember them. He describes them as a people who preached the gospel of the kingdom of God. They baptized by immersion. They kept the Passover on the 14th of Nisan. They kept the Sabbath. And they kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Now, we think they kept the rest of the Holy Days. We don't know why they would have kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread and not the rest of the Holy Days. But again, the records here are very difficult to find. Even this one, The Key of Truth, this was a book that basically was translated about 100 years ago, and it sat on Fred Konybear's shelf for a long time before he even got to it. And after he translated, he realized, wow, this is a really interesting group that nobody ever knew about that only came to light about 100 years ago. The Waldensians. We talk about the Waldensians in France and other parts of Europe in the 12th and 13th century. J.F. Coldheart, in his book, The Sabbath of God Through the Centuries, says that for 20 years, Peter de Bries stirred southern France. He especially emphasized a day of worship that was recognized at that time among the Celtic churches of the British Isles, among the Paulicians, and in the great Church of the East, namely the Seventh Day or the Fourth Commandment. Now, the Waldensians have gone to great lengths to say that they never kept the Sabbath, but we have these records here describing Peter de Vries. And Peter de Vries was sort of an early inspiration for Peter Waldo in France regarding the Sabbath. Robert Cox, in his book, The Literature of the Sabbath, questions, says that in 1310, 200 years before Luther's theses, the Bohemian brethren constituted one-fourth of the population of Bohemia and were in touch with the Waldensians, who abounded in Austria, Lombardy, Bohemia, North Germany, Brandenburg, and Monrovia. Erasmus pointed out how strictly Bohemian Waldenses kept the Seventh-Day Sabbath. So, despite what the Waldenses might say today, there are many records that point out that they kept the Seventh-Day Sabbath.

We have the Lawlords in the 14th century in England as Sabbath keepers. And then we have American Sabbatarians here in the United States, Stephen Mumford, in 1664, went to Rhode Island and started the first Sabbath-keeping congregation in Newport in 1671. Brown University was originally founded by Sabbath keepers. And in 1740, a group of Morovians settled in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and they called themselves the Church of God. Now, you know, this is not mainstream history. People don't know this, right? Because this is small. The Church of God in the 21st century is small. It's little, right? It's fragile. And that's why we have this promise given to us in Matthew 16 that says the gates of hell will not prevail against us. Because we need to know that. Because if we didn't know that, we might say, what's going to happen to the Church? Are we going to survive? Well, we are until Christ returns. Because that's what the Kingdom of God is all about. It's about something that's very small and fragile that God creates glory around and turns into something amazing. That's what He's describing. And as we observe this Sabbath here in Northern California, I don't think we are much different from those who have gone before us. We're small. We're fragile. But God willing, we trust in Him to give us our strength, no matter what we're dealing with, whether it's our jobs or our families or our health or our personal backgrounds or our life experiences or whatever we're working to overcome, God is happy to help us. That's the point. He wants to help us. And then we give Him the glory for showing us the way.

I look forward to meeting all these people. I think it's going to be amazing to hear their stories of what it was like to live at their time and what they went through. I mean, our lives are typically not on the line here. Their lives were on the line. I don't have the Al Bijois up here, but the Al Bijois were a group that lived in France, in southern France. And the Pope said, you know, we're going to take care of these people. And he sent an army against them.

And basically, they were driven up into these sort of perched mountaintops. And they built these castles and these perched mountaintops to defend themselves. And essentially, they outlasted the Pope's decrees until finally, 400 years later, they just gave up and said, okay, fine. We're not going to try and attack you anymore. And God's people were very likely among the Al Bijois, right, persecuted by the Catholic Church at the time. Look over in Luke 18.

Luke 18, verse 8.

We've looked at this parable before. This is the parable of the persistent widow.

We'll start in verse 1. Then he spoke a parable to them, and men always ought to pray and not to lose heart, saying, There was a certain city, a judge, who did not fear God nor regard man.

And there was a widow in that city, and she came to him, saying, Avenge me of my adversary, and he would not for a while. But afterwards he said, Within himself, though I do not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming, she weary me. And then the Lord said here what the unjust judge said, And shall God not avenge his own elect, who cry out day and night to him, though he bears along with them. He is going to hear our prayers. But what does he say? It's chilling in verse 8. This is the chilling part. I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nonetheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he really find faith on the earth? Is he really going to find faith on the earth? Well, I hope so in a small, fragile group of people who are striving to be like his son, Jesus Christ, and grow into the image of God the Father. According to the CIA World Factbook, the world population in 2012 was approximately 7 billion people. It's growing. I don't have the date here, but it will soon be 8 billion. And approximately 30 percent of the planet considers themselves Christian. It's the largest religion on the planet. Christianity is defined by Catholics and Protestants, including Anglicans and Orthodox, comprise the largest single religious group on the planet day with more than 2 billion adherents. How do these words of Christ match with what we see with 2 billion Christians? If there's 2 billion Christians and it's the largest denomination, you know, sort of religion on the planet, what does this mean? Will he find faith on the earth? I can only make sense of this if I kind of come to see that actually being Christian may not be what a lot of people think. What it means to be a Christian may not be what a lot of people think.

Will he find people who love him and keep his commandments and cry out to him every day because they know they're small and they need his help? That's what he's asking. That's what this parable is about. This is a widow. This is not the CEO of some big corporation. This is a helpless person who has no means of support. That's what this parable is about. And this says that God will avenge her, take care of her, because even the judge who was unjust through this constant request was willing to take care of this widow that he really didn't care anything about. He was not interested in her. He was not interested in God. He was not interested in what people thought about him. He was going to just take care of this widow because she bugged him. And if this judge is going to take care of that widow, how much more is God going to take care of us, is the point. And yet, will we constantly go to him, like the widow, constantly went? Will we trust in our own strength and say, hey, we're doing okay, and we won't go to God? And at the end, will he really find faith on the earth? I hope and pray that God will see and rejoice in his people here, and his people around the world who are keeping his laws and looking to him.

And as I consider this small group, I think there's a connection back to these people and what they've done, a connection to what it means to be small. Small, but amazing!

Small, but amazing. That's what the kingdom of God means, and what this little insight that he gives, that even though it starts out very, very small, and even though it's fragile, and probably remains fragile, right? This guy looks here, looks like he could just rip that thing right out of the ground. Even though it remains fragile, it is truly amazing, unexpected, and not what you would expect, but truly something beautiful. I hope this is helpful as we understand the parable of the mustard seed, and I look forward to discussions after services.