GOSPEL PARABLES 6 THE MUSTARD SEED

GOSPEL PARABLES 6 THE MUSTARD SEED 
This parable comes after the parable of the Sower and the seed in the three Gospels of Matthew Ch.13 and Mark Ch.7 and Luke Ch.13. It follows the same Kingdom theme that sets the overall framework of the seed as being the word of God and the soil being our hearts of faith. Jesus told his disciples that if they did not understand that truth they would not understand any of the parables (Mark 4:13). Today we are reading from the Gospel of Matthew.
Matthew 13:31 He told them another parable, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all other shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” 

The birds in the mustard tree parable symbolize the Gentile Nations coming to find shelter in the kingdom of God, a theme rooted in Old Testament prophecy and fulfilled in the New Testament. There are two Old Testament prophesies in Ezekiel (Ch.17 and Ch.31 about Lebanon and Assyria) and one in Daniel (Ch.10Babylon) that speak of kingdoms as trees growing to a great size so that the migratory birds of the air come and take shelter in the branches, symbolising those birds as foreign nations becoming included in those three kingdoms. The mustard seed parable highlights the inclusive nature of God's kingdom, where all nations and families of the earth are invited to enter in by faith and become part of God's family.

With the framework of the seed as being the word and the soil as being the hearts as our reference point, we see that the lesson in the parable of the mustard seed is that the seed of the word of faith can be of the smallest size and yet it can grow to be a faith of great magnitude. 
If all we do is trust Jesus to exercise his faith and grace in interceding to the Father on our behalf, we will see the Father’s goodness and faithfulness come to pass in our lives. That is what it means to cultivate a surrendered faith, and the smallest of seeds grows into the greatest fulfilment. 
Trusting Jesus in that way means that we say to Jesus in our need, ‘I can trust in you to speak your word into my heart and intercede for me according to the will of the Father’. We don’t exert our own mental and emotional energy to muster the kind of faith and power that thinks we own and direct the outcome we want as the answer to our prayers. We leave those answers and outcomes under the command of Jesus because he intercedes to the Father for us to bring about the Father’s will for us and the Father manifests that answer openly. ‘He (Jesus) makes intercession for us according to the will of God and we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are invited to live according to His purpose.’ (Romans 8:27-28 and 34)

In this way our surrendered faith has the ultimate hope of God’s will coming to pass for us. And this is in contrast to non-surrendered faith which demands its own result and gets confused and somewhat surprised that it doesn’t get what it thought the Bible said it would. But surrendered faith never demands its own results and is always surprised by the astonishing results that God grants to that greater mustard seed faith. Surrendered speaks the word that Jesus gives us to say, like when Jesus on the Mt of olives said if you have faith like a mustard seed you will say to this mountain be removed and cast into the sea (Matthew 17:20). 

There are two striking examples of people exercising that kind of surrendered faith in the Gospels that Jesus praises as being ‘great faith’, where both of these people receive a miraculous answer to their request - and both of them are Gentiles and not Jews. This is prophetic of the New Testament gathering of all the Gentile Nations of the world into the mustard seed tree of the Kingdom of God as told in the parable.

One ‘mustard seed great faith’ story is of the Gentile mother who asked Jesus to heal her demon possessed daughter, and Jesus refused, saying I was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel (Matthew 15:21).  He was letting her know he was here to fulfill the mission of his Father to Israel. He even told her that Gentiles were regarded as dogs by the Jews.
The other ‘great faith’ story is about the Centurion who asks Jesus to heal his paralysed son and when Jesus makes a decision to go to his home the Centurion says ‘no Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but just say the word and my son will be healed.’ 
The peculiar similarity between these two stories is that Jesus makes an immediate decision about what he should do, and then changes his mind about it in both cases when each of these people query what he decided in the first place.
The question is – why would Jesus listen to the Gentile mother and the Gentile Centurion, and pause and then change his mind about his decisions? 
I’ll need to answer that with more questions.
Was Jesus always waiting to see first what his Father would do in a situation or waiting to hear what his Father had to say into a situation before he acted? 
And would the Holy Spirit bear witness to Jesus about what his Father would do or say? 
And would Jesus then speak and act accordingly? 
The Bible says ‘yes’ to each of those questions.

In the situation with the Gentile mother with the demon possessed daughter, when she hears the remark about the Jew’s calling Gentiles dogs, she says ‘even the dogs are allowed crumbs from the table’. She took a lowly place and accepted that she had no place in claiming anything from God, but something in her heart also trusted totally in Jesus and she surrendered everything to him. Jesus as a Jewish man under the law whose heart was to please his Father had made a just reckoning of this situation and obediently aligned himself to what his mission to Israel was. However, when the woman spoke about dogs getting the crumbs Jesus was faced with having to give her an answer. 

And she did not realise or understand that Jesus would also surrender everything he did to what his Father might want to do in the matter. ‘The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner’ (John 5:19). The Bible says that Jesus did change his mind and the woman’s daughter was healed from that hour. The woman’s faith was rewarded not just by her daughter being delivered and set free, but also by the unexpected praise of Jesus for her great faith. The Father wanted that woman’s prayer answered. Is that where ultimate surrendered authority ends up? Did 
Jesus surrendered his authority to his Father’s will.

The other ‘great faith’ story is of the Gentile Centurion who asks Jesus to heal his paralysed son. Jesus says he will go to his home but the Centurion counters that decision of Jesus and says ‘no Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but just say the word and I know he will be healed.’ because I am also a man under authority having soldiers under me and when I say ‘go’ they go, and to another come and he comes and to another do this and he does it. (Matthew 8:8). The Bible goes on to say that Jesus marvels at this and says that he has not found such great faith even in the children of Israel. Here is another example of ultimate surrendered faith and surrendered authority. 

But even though the Centurion understood the principle of authority and believed that Jesus was in charge, he did not know that Jesus did nothing unless he heard his Father speak to him. As the Bible says ‘As I hear, I decide; and My decision is just, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me (John 5:30). Jesus knew that the Father was in command of that situation, and when Jesus heard his Father speak into that situation, even perhaps through the Centurion’s own words, Jesus decided to not walk in his own strength to the Centurion’s home but to allow his Word to do the travelling. This is all we need to know – how to surrender to the authority of Jesus and the authority of Father God in our struggles and prayer burdens – and we can enter into the rest of faith. This is the mustard seed faith that grows into a great tree of hope.

God the Father was always in Jesus doing that work in the world of the unseen, and the Holy Spirit always empowered the word that Jesus spoke. The Holy Spirit communicates God’s words to us in ways that so often seem like natural occurrences, like the Gentile woman’s statement about the dog getting crumbs or the words of the principled Centurion entreating Jesus to save himself a long walk and simply send his Word. This was a work of the Three in One Trinity of God - This was the way The human and Divine work of Jesus took the burden of the peoples’ needs and heard the Father in Heaven and left the manifestation of the outcome in the hands of the Father. This is how God has ordained that we now are to connect with the Three Persons in One God. Their loving care and attendance to the lowly Gentile woman outsider and the principled Gentile Centurion is the same loving attendance they give to our struggles and needs with our mustard seed faith.

We can now see our life experience of faith as being not just about us, but as an extension of the very life of God. The life of Father God is in Jesus and of the life of Jesus in us and we are in them, working together through the power of Holy Spirit and into our world. Our world can be touched by God through a mustard seed of faith that grows into a tree of the Kingdom of God. And we will see many people in our world blessed and healed as they dwell in its branches.