“A Grain of Mustard Seed … Grew, and Waxed a Great Tree”
He parable may be understood to relate to our Lord Himself, who is the living Seed. You know also how His church is the tree that springs from Him, and how greatly it grows and spreads its branches until it covers the earth. From the one man Christ Jesus, despised and rejected of men, slain and buried, and so hidden away from among men — from Him, I say, there ariseth a multitude which no man can number. These spread themselves, like some tree which grows by the rivers of water, and they yielded both gracious shelter and spiritual food. A great little parable, it has a word of teaching within the smallest compass. The parable is itself like a grain of mustard seed, but its meanings are as a great tree.
“It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took.” He took zt: that is to say, picked it out from the bulk. It was only one grain, and a grain of a very insignificant seed; but he did not let it lie on the shelf, he took it in his hand to put it to its proper use. A grain of mustard seed is too small a thing for public exhibition; the man who takes it in his hand is almost the only one who spies it out. It was only a grain of mustard seed, but the man set it before his own mind as a distinct object to be dealt with. He was not sowing mustard over broad acres, but he was
* Luke xiii. 19.
sowing ‘‘a grain of mustard seed” in his garden. It is well for the teacher to know what he is going to teach; to have that truth distinctly in his mind’s eye, as the man had the grain of mustard seed between. his fingers. Depend upon it, unless a truth is clearly seen and distinctly recognised by the teacher, little will come of it tothetaught. It may beavery simple truth; but if a man takes it, understands it, grasps it and loves it, he will do something with it.
This man kad a garden: “Like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden.” Some Christian people have no garden — no personal sphere of service. They belong to the whole clan of Christians, and they pine to see the entire band go out to cultivate the whole world; but they do not come to personal particulars. It is delightful to be warmed up by missionary addresses, and to feel a zeal for the salvation of all the nations; but, after all, the net result of a general theoretic earnestness for all the world does not amount to much. As we should have no horticulture if men had no gardens, so we shall have no missionary work done unless each person has a mission. It is the duty of every believer in Christ, like the first man, Adam, to have a garden to dress and to till. Children are in the Sunday-schools by millions: thank God for that! But have you a class of your own? All the church at work for Christ! Glorious theory! Are you up and doing for your Lord? It will be a grand time when every believer has his allotment, and is sowing it with the seed of truth. The wilderness and the solitary place will blossom as the rose when each Christian cultivates his own plot of roses, Where should this unnamed man sow his mustard seed but in his own garden? It was near him, and dear to him, and thither he went. Teach your own children, speak to your neighbours, seek the conversion of those whom God has especially entrusted to you.
Having a garden, and having this seed, the man sowed zt: and simple as this is, it is the hinge of the instruction. You have a number of seeds in a pill-box. There they are: look at them! Take that box down this day twelve months, and the seeds will be just the same. Lay them by in that dry box for seven years, and nothing will happen. Truth is not to be kept to ourselves: it is to be published and advocated. There is an old proverb, “Truth is mighty, and will prevail.” The proverb is true in a sense; but it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. If you put truth away, and leave it without a voice, it won’t prevail; it will not even contend. When have great truths prevailed? Why, when brave men have persisted in declaring them. Daring spirits have taken up a cause which has been, at the first, unpopular, and they have spoken about it so earnestly, and so often, that at length the cause has commanded attention: they have pressed on and on till the cause has triumphed altogether. Truth has been mighty, and has prevailed; but yet not without the men who gave it life and tongue. Not even the Gospel itself, if it be not taught, will prevail. If revealed truth be laid on one side and kept in silence, it will not grow. Mark how, through the Dark Ages, the Gospel lay asleep in old books in the libraries of monasteries, till Luther and his fellow reformers fetched it out and sowed it in the minds of men.
This man simply cast it into his garden. He did not wrap it round with gold leaf, or otherwise adorn it; but he put it into the ground. The naked seed came into contact with the naked soil. Do not try to make the Gospel look fine; do not overlay it with your fine words, or elaborate explanations. The Gospel seed is to be put into the young heart justas it is. Get the truth concerning the Lord Jesus into the children’s minds. Make them know, not what you can say about the truth, but what the truth itselfsays. It is wicked to take the Gospel and make a peg of it to hang our old clothes upon. The Gospel is not a boat to be freighted with human thoughts, fine speculations, scraps of poetry, and pretty tales. No, no, the Gospel is the thought of God: in and of itself it is the message which the soul needs. It is the Gospel itself which will grow. Take a truth, specially that great doctrine, that man is lost and that Christ is the only Saviour, and see to it that you place it in the mind. Teach plainly the great truth that whosoever believeth in Him hath everlasting life; and that the Lord Jesus bare our sins in His own body on the tree, and suffered for us, the just for the unjust — I say take these truths and set them forth to the mind, and see what will come of it. Sow the very truth; not your reflections on the truth, not your embellishments of the truth, but the truth itself. This is to be brought into contact with the mind; for the truth is the seed, and the human mind is the soil for it to grow in.
It is an easy thing to deliver an address upon -mustard seed, to give the children a taste of the pungency of mustard, to tell them how mustard seed would grow, what kind of a tree it would produce, and how the birds would sing among its branches. But this is not sowing mustard seed. It is all very fine to talk about the influence of the Gospel, the ethics of Christianity, the elevating power of the love of Christ, and so on; but what we want is the Gospel itself, which exercises that influence. Sow the seed: tell the children the doctrine of the Cross, the fact that with the stripes of Jesus we are healed, and that by faith in Him we are justified.
That which is described in the parable was an insignificant business: the man took the tiny seed and put it into his garden. It isa very common-place affair to sit down with a dozen children around you, and open your Bible and tell them the well-worn tale
of how Jesus Christ came into the world to save
sinners. No Pharisee is likely to stand and blow a trumpet when he is going to teach children: he is more likely to point to the children in the temple, and sneeringly say, “Hearest thou what these say?” It is a lowly business altogether: but yet to the mustard seed, and to the man with a garden, the sowing is the all-important matter. The mustard seed will never grow unless put into the soil: the owner of the garden will never have a crop of mustard unless he sows the seed. Dear Sunday-school teacher, do not become weary of your humble work, for none can measure its importance.