Dr. Roger Parrott, Belhaven University Chapel Series

Jesus said, how can I describe the kingdom of God?

What should I use to illustrate it?

It's like a mustard seed planted in the ground.

It is the smallest of all seeds, but it becomes the largest of all garden plants.

It grows long branches and birds can make nests under its shade.

Jesus used many similar stories and illustrations to teach the people as much as they could understand.

In fact, in his public ministry, he never taught without using parable.

But afterward, when he was alone with his disciples, he explained everything to them.

As evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, let's cross to the other side of the lake.

So they took Jesus in the boat and started out leaving, started out leaving the crowds behind, although other boats followed.

But soon a fierce storm came up.

High waves were breaking into the boat and began and it began to fill with water.

Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion.

The disciples woke him up, shouting, teacher, don't you care that we're going to drown?

When Jesus woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the waves, silence, be still.

Suddenly the wind stopped and there was a great calm.

Then he asked them, why are you afraid?

Do you still have no faith?

The disciples were absolutely terrified.

Who is this man?

They asked each other.

Even the wind and the waves obey him.

Jesus told stories to help us understand how different the kingdom of God is from the world we know.

To not see the world through sin's distorted eyes of a beautiful world God created and has been distorted by sin, but to see it through the eyes of God.

And so he told these stories to help us begin to learn how to live and to love and to flourish in the kingdom of God, not just in heaven, but now.

He often said, the kingdom of God is now.

And so that's why we're looking at these parables is to understand the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God.

He uses the words interchangeably.

As we talked about, it's an upside down world from the world we understand.

It's not just somewhat different, it's completely different opposite.

Just like sin in all of its filth compared to the purity of a Holy God is 100% different.

So is the kingdom of God from the world we understand.

And so it's a process to understand this kingdom of God.

And that's why day by day I pray we can see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, and follow thee more nearly.

And that's what Jesus did with the disciples as he told this story every day a little bit more.

So today we're going to look at a wonderful parable.

The parable of the mustard seed.

Now, I wish I could hold up a mustard seed to you.

I don't think I could hold it in my hand.

Cause it's so tiny and you couldn't see it if I did.

But when Jesus talked about the mustard seed to the people, they knew exactly what he was talking about.

They knew a mustard seed in their agricultural culture was the smallest of all seeds.

But they also knew if that mustard seed was planted and it grew, it grew into one the largest plants, 8 to 10ft tall, from a tiny, tiny seed.

Jesus didn't have to explain it to them.

They knew all that.

And they knew the concept that if you take a mustard seed and plant it, something very small becomes something really big.

Now, we find this story in two books of the Bible.

And in two different books of the Bible, we see the story.

You know, if you're not familiar, most of maybe are.

But if you're not, there are four gospel accounts of Jesus.

Four of the disciples wrote the account of Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

And we heard today this story read from Mark.

And Mark was kind of the reporter.

He was kind of like a news reporter.

Everything's really fast.

It's succinct.

It's just the facts kind of thing.

And Mark's focus in his gospel is about the kingdom of God's influence in the world.

Well, we also have the story in the book of Matthew.

Now, Matthew was a tax collector.

So Matthew was very detailed.

And so he told more detail about the story.

And so we have the story in the two places.

But Jesus probably told this story many, many, many, many times.

You see, the people in those days, they didn't write much stuff down because they didn't have the ability to do so.

They didn't have the.

The kind of access to resources that we do.

And so it was an oral culture.

And so they would tell the same story over and over and over until they would memorize it.

And that's why these disciples could recite it so carefully.

So Jesus had told this story many times.

So we've heard it in Mark.

I want to read it to you from Matthew because you kind of got to put the two together to get the full of this parable that Jesus is talking about.

He says the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed planted in the ground.

It's the smallest of all seeds, but it becomes the largest of all garden plants.

And it grows long branches and the birds can make nests in it.

I tell you the truth.

If you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it would move.

Nothing is impossible.

Now, there are two key messages from the parable of the mustard seed.

Two key messages.

The first is faith is central to the kingdom of God.

You can't become part of the kingdom of God.

You can't transform from this world to the kingdom of God world if you don't have faith.

So faith is foundational to the kingdom of God.

We have to understand faith and how that grows in our lives in order to be part of the kingdom of God.

And the second point of the story is this.

The disciples didn't understand the potential of what faith could do because he said, if you had the faith of mustard seed, you could move this mountain.

And in this account of Mark, this happens just after they could not heal a young boy who was sick, and Jesus did heal him.

And so you have these two critical factors.

Faith is central to the kingdom of God, and faith has a potential that we don't understand.

Well, the part of the story, though, that gets quoted all the time is about the mustard seed.

Faith that moves a mountain, doesn't it?

So you see that people stick it on their social media.

If I had the faith, I could move mountains.

If I had the faithful mustard seed, I could move mountains.

Nothing's impossible with God if you have faith.

And you know, I heard all that too, and for years and years I would hear that.

And to be really candid with you, I said, that's not me.

That's not me.

I don't think I'd have the faith to say, move that from there to there, or to calm the seas, like Jesus said.

I don't have that kind of faith.

And so I'd always kind of shrink away from this parable because I really didn't understand it.

The concept we often feel is put before us is I need more faith.

If I just had more faith, I could do more for God.

If I had more faith, I'd have a more successful life.

If I had more faith, good things would happen.

No, that is not at all what Jesus is saying.

Remember, Jesus is upside down from what we often assume.

What Jesus is saying is not just that they need.

Not that they need more faith.

What he's saying is these assumptions we have about faith, you need to put aside.

Well, the first assumption we have about faith is that our problem is our lack of effort.

If we put more effort into a difficulty, if we just tried harder and in the name of God, then we do better.

And that's not at all what the parable is saying.

But I think we feel that way when we hit roadblocks.

So we have difficulties and our assumption is we don't have enough faith.

Or maybe our problem is getting stronger.

If I was just a stronger Christian, these difficulties wouldn't be there.

If I was just a stronger Christian, God could use me to move mountains.

And that's not what Jesus is saying.

But we take on that assumption.

The third is our problem is.

Excuse me.

Our problem is not needing more faith.

Excuse me, is needing more faith.

I got an extra knot in there.

Sorry about that.

Our problem is needing more faith.

If I just had more faith, then I could do great things for God.

If I had more faith, my dad wouldn't be sick because I could pray and God would heal him.

If I had more faith, I could get into the graduate school I really want to get into, but because I didn't get in, I didn't have enough faith.

And we could pretty quickly be beat down by the devil with these assumptions that are not true.

There's something wrong with me that.

That I don't have enough faith is how we often respond to this issue of I could move mountains if I had the faith of mustard seed.

When we see difficulties and struggle, we focus on how we didn't have enough effort, we didn't have enough strength, we didn't have enough faith.

And that is not at all what Jesus is saying in this parable.

He's saying the exact opposite.

So what did he really say?

It isn't about the size of your faith.

It's about the object of your faith.

Got that?

It's not about the size of your faith.

It's about the object of your faith, who your faith is in.

Jesus isn't trying to get us to have more faith.

He says if you.

He doesn't say, go get more mustard seeds.

And if you had a handful of mustard seeds, you could move a mountain.

He says, no, if you have one tiny, tiny mustard seed, it will grow into something big.

God's telling us if we will take whatever faith we have, any faith, if it's genuine, and connect it to the unlimited power of God.

God can do amazing things.

He could take what's small.

If your faith is small, if your faith is undeveloped, he can take that.

If your faith is untested, he can take that.

It's all about dependence on him, not how much faith we can generate in our spirit.

Faith in the power of God, not Faith in God to use me.

But what is faith?

Well, we have a great definition of faith.

It's in Hebrews chapter 11.

And it reads like this.

Faith is a.

Confidence is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

Genuine faith changes everything.

When you have confidence and when you have assurance.

Genuine faith changes everything.

It changes our level of trust, it changes our hope, it changes our outlook, it changes our relationships.

Now, in my life, I've been to Disney World too many times.

My kids love it.

They loved it growing up.

They still love it.

They're in their 30s.

They still love it.

We don't go back as often, which is good because.

Because Disney's got way too much of my money.

But when I go to Disney, I gotta tell you, after being there a lot of times, it's kind of boring.

It really is.

Because, I mean, how many times can you ride Pooh Bear?

I like it.

But, you know, so you're standing in line, you're watching.

And so when I go to Disney and I don't get around small kids very often, I work with college students, so I don't get around little kids very often.

When I go to college, to Disney, I'm always fascinated by watching the families.

And you look at these kids, you know, they're three, four, five, six years, seven years old.

And I watch them with their parents and I realize how totally dependent they are on their parents.

Their faith for their entire life is put in that dad.

Their confidence for everything that they have is put in that Mom.

And without faith, if you took that away, those kids have nothing.

Zero.

Well, as a child of God, the same is true with us.

When we have that kind of relationship with God.

So we are so completely dependent on him that without him we have nothing.

That's when faith the size of a mustard seed moves mountains.

That's what Hebrews 11 is talking about.

That level of confidence, that level of assurance.

So look at this, a little bit more detail.

First of all, it talks about the confidence in God's promises.

Are we confident that what God is saying is true?

Not wishful thinking?

I really hope it's true.

I really hope what Jesus is all about is really true.

And I really hope there's a heaven.

And I really hope that.

No, it is confidence that that is true.

Faith is confidence in what we hope for.

It's not wishful thinking because it's confidence.

Get this.

Clearly get this.

It's confidence in God's character.

Character.

It's not confidence in a bunch of rewards.

And prizes and tokens.

It's confidence in God's character.

And when we have confidence in God's character, that's when we begin to have faith, assurance.

Assurance that the invisible is real.

The assurance about what we do not see that the invisible is real.

God's presence is real.

His leading is real.

His sovereignty is real.

Eternity is real, even though you can't see it.

Every single one of us believes electricity is real.

We plug in our stuff, we would never think that it wouldn't work.

But you haven't seen it.

I haven't seen it.

But it's real because we have faith through.

When we go over to that plug and we plug in, it's going to work.

That's assurance about what we do not see.

And then faith is about active trust.

Active trust.

It's not just a theoretical trust.

Yeah, I've got faith.

I really believe in God.

No, it's acting on that faith.

You know, I mean, I got this chair back here that I sit in during chapel.

Kind of heavy, but I think I can move it a little bit.

And I could have faith that this chair will hold me.

I could have faith that those legs are solid.

And I could have faith this is built right.

And I could have faith that's built for me.

But, you know, until I come over here and I actually sit in the chair and I take my feet off the ground, there is no active faith.

Faith has to be acted on.

James said, without works, faith is dead.

Excuse me, without faith, faith without works is dead.

Let me get that correct.

Faith without works is dead.

That's what James said.

You've got to have works to express your faith.

Now, that doesn't mean your works will get you salvation.

No, your works give you growth, to trust God more and more.

And every time I sit in the chair, I know every time it's going to come through and faith grows.

Faith is not a leap in the dark.

It's a step into the light of the kingdom of God.

Got that?

Faith is not a leap into the dark.

It's a step into the light of the kingdom of God.

You had the faith of this mustard seed.

You could move mountains from here to there.

But, you know, there's a tendency to think about that and go, man, that's kind of superpower.

That's kind of a Marvel movie.

You watch Marvel movies?

My son took me to Superman.

It was pretty good.

It's not Superpower, like a Marvel movie.

Faith is not about what I can do, but about who God is.

As my loving Father, that's what faith is.

So when he's talking about moving mountains, he's not talking about physical mountains.

Nobody he talked to that day when he told these stories assumed it was physical mountains.

Mountains were a metaphor for obstacles.

The common figure of speech in those days, you know, I got to move that mountain.

It doesn't mean you're going to actually move it.

It's got to mean you've got an obstacle you got to overcome.

Just like Jesus said, you know, there's a log in your eye.

He didn't mean an actual piece of wood in your eye.

He said you're the light of the world.

He didn't mean you're a candle.

Metaphors that he'd often use.

So when he says mountains, he's talking about the obstacles in our lives.

Those impossible things that feel overwhel.

Foaming and mountains, the obstacles of our life.

You tend to travel around them because you don't want to go over them.

Or they limit where you can live.

Or in those days where you could farm, they have to be accommodated.

They're not moved.

Or you can become frustrated by them.

And you become combative with the obstacles of life.

And there are a lot of people who do that.

They just live angry because they're fighting all the obstacles.

Too often our lives are about accommodating obstacles.

Instead of having faith that God will lead us through, over, around, or he'll move them.

When you get hit with a difficulty, you got to know a few things.

When you're hit with that hard problem, you got to know a few things.

First of all, God wants the very best for you.

He created you, he loves you, and he wants the very best for you.

Secondly, God is using the things in your life to either prepare you or protect you.

One of the two.

He's either preparing you for what's ahead.

He's getting you tougher.

He's getting you experience, he's getting you insight that you can handle more.

What's on going.

Or he's protecting you from something horrible and we don't know which.

And thirdly, you gotta know you are a child of God.

Just like those little kids at Disney World.

They look up to those parents.

That's everything in their life.

Everything.

You and I have that same relationship with God.

We are his children.

He says that you're a child of God and so we can have faith in his outcome for the obstacles of life, whatever they are.

So how do you build that faith?

How do you build that kind of faith?

I want to tell You.

It takes some time and it takes some practice to build that faith.

It really does.

It doesn't happen overnight.

It doesn't happen by sheer grit.

It happens by experience and by testing and by exercising that faith.

So I want to give you today three really practical examples for how to grow faith in your life.

Now, these are the things that I do, okay?

They may not work for everybody.

They really work for me, and I've been doing them for years.

And they really have helped me in my faith.

I had somebody yesterday, we were dealing with a challenging issue at school, and one of my board members, I was having lunch with him.

He said, I don't know how you carry what you do.

I said, I don't.

God does.

It's pretty easy.

God's got this.

When you have faith that gets built up over time and experience, you can handle more and more and more.

So I want to give you three things that I do.

They may not help for you.

They may be applicable for you.

I hope they might be, because for in my life, they have helped me to develop faith through the years.

The first one is this, and it's in the concept of what happens when a problem develop.

A difficulty develops you didn't see coming.

And it builds up and it builds up until it's really blocking things for the future.

I use the example of log jams.

Now, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest.

I think there are a couple of people here from Seattle and Portland.

You understand this.

But in the Pacific Northwest, when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, the loggers would cut down the trees up in the mountains, and they'd drag them down to the edge of the river and they would lash them together.

Kind of like this picture.

They'd lash them together, and then they would let them float down the river because that was a lot cheaper than trying to move them in trucks.

And in those days, they didn't have the level of trucks that they have now and all that stuff.

And so they would put these big, huge logs in the river and then float them down, and then they take them out down below and take them to the sawmill and all that kind of thing.

Well, every once in a while, those logs would get jammed up and they called it a log jam.

And that's an actual log jam from a river where I didn't live very far from in Oregon about the time that I was growing up.

Those logs would come down and they just get stuck.

One would hit a rock and another one would hit another log, and they just get Stuck, and they get big and it gets overwhelming.

And sometimes in life, we hit log jams.

That's why we use the phrase, I'm jammed up.

We hit log jams where things just get difficult, things get hard and it gets built up and a problem becomes consuming, and we want to do something about it.

So what can we do?

There's three options.

Three options you can do.

The first option is you can go in there like the loggers used to do, and you can try to clear the log jam.

They would go in there with these big iron bars 12ft long.

They get out on the logs and they would try to move them to get the logs to unjam.

Now, you can do that when you've got a problem, but it's dangerous.

If you get your foot caught between one of those logs, you're going to lose your foot.

You could easily lose your life if you got caught down in that log jam.

And there are a lot of people, when they hit log jams in life, they just want to go in and fix it.

They want to get a crowbar and a big bar and try to move the impossible to get it fixed, and they get hurt more often than not.

You can do that.

That's option one.

Option two, when you hit a log jam is you can blow it up.

Literally blow it up.

They go out in these big log jams, they stick dynamite in there and they just blow it up.

Now, you could do that, and it may clear the log jam, but you don't know what the damage is going to be.

And there are a lot of people, when they hit problems in life and difficulties in life, they just go in and they blow stuff up.

And so what if there's collateral damage?

So what if they hurt their friends?

So what if they hurt their family?

I've got to take care of my problem now, and we're going to blow this thing up because that's what I want to do.

So you can do that, but there's a lot of risk in that one.

The third thing you can do is have the faith to wait and let God solve it.

And my experience has been in a log jam, those logs will rub against each other for a while.

It doesn't look like they're moving much, but they are.

And they're starting to break up just a little bit here and there as you wait and you're patient and you let God solve it.

And after a while, I have found that log jams nearly always clear themselves.

Nearly always clear themselves.

If you have the faith to trust God and to wait.

And in my problem solving with the university family, whatever it may be, I try to take that approach because the first one is very dangerous and the second one's very unpredictable.

But when you have faith that God will clear the log jams of your life and you're patient, it won't come in the time you think it will.

It'll take longer.

But if you're patient, God will eventually kill the log jams.

Because why does God want you to be all jammed up?

He doesn't, but he's doing something in order to shape, protect or prepare you.

So that's the first thing I do.

I try to have the patience when difficulties come, to wait and to trust God and to wait for the log jam to rub against itself and, and to be able to clear the way.

The second thing that I do that's helpful to me is that when I'm overwhelmed by stuff, when I've got a lot of worries, when I got a lot of things that are really frustrating or consuming, and I can take time to sit down and write out that list, medical problem or issue with, you know, some employee or a new program we're starting or whatever it may be, I'll write down that list.

What are all the things that have me anxious?

If you can write down the list of things that have you anxious, put them on a paper and say, God, I trust you.

I have faith that you will take care of me because I'm your child.

And so I'm going to really put that faith into action.

I'm actually going to sit on the chair, I'm going to take that list and here's what I do.

You can do it how you want to.

I take that list and I put it in my Bible because I know I'll find it there later.

So I take the list of things that I'm really worried about, the things I make you sober, the things I'm overwhelmed by, the things that need to be solved.

I'll write the list down, I'll put it in the Bible and I'll wait.

And I usually go back to that list about four to five, six months later.

And almost every time, and I've been doing this for years and years and years, almost every time, every single thing in that list God has solved.

Not solved how I thought it was going to be solved, not always in the timing I thought, but everything on the list went off the list.

And you know what?

I got a new list.

I got a new list of stuff that's Overwhelming and stuff that's burdening and stuff that makes me worry.

And so I write that one down and I start a new list.

And the same thing happens over and over and over again.

When you do that, when you trust God, when you have the faith that he will do that.

See, every time you're going through this process, it builds your faith.

And then it just gets easier and easier to have faith of a mustard seed that grows into something significant.

Well, the last one is this, and I think this one's important, especially in today's culture where things are so uncertain.

There's an awful lot of uncertainty about the future.

When I'm looking ahead of what's ahead, it's overwhelming, isn't it?

There's so much stuff, there's so many obstacles, there's so much unknown, there's so many dangers.

When I look at the path of the future and where I got to go to get from here to there, to lead this university, to help my family to do all the things that need to happen, it feels absolutely overwhelming.

The only way that I can do that is by regularly looking back.

And when I look back at the path where God has brought me, and I can see the trail of how God brought me through the mountains, around the mountains, over the mountains, moved the mountains, I can look back and say, wow, God really is leading me.

And then when I turn back to look at the future where I want to say, yikes, how are we going to make it?

I change that into a wow, God, you've got this thing.

You've got it.

I've got faith that you will lead it.

Because I can look back and see where you've led it.

And although this is scary, that's confidence building, that's assurance, and that's what faith is.

Look back in order to look ahead.

Because if you only look ahead, you're going to be overwhelmed.

You won't have the faith to walk forward.

It's in looking back where you get the faith to trust God for what's ahead.

Hold on to what God will do as well as what he's already done.

And don't let temporary struggles define you.

Let God promises shape you and shape your identity.

You see, it's all about dependence.

It's not about your faith.

If your faith is genuine, even if it's the size of a mustard seed, which you can't even see if it's genuine, God will use it.

It's all about dependence.

Faith looks forward with hope because of who our faith is in.

Let's pray together.

Our benediction.

No eye is seen, no ear is heard.

No mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.

God bless.

Have a good day.