June 14, 2026 Mark 4:26-34 “It’s a Mystery to Me!”

12 Jun June 14, 2026 Mark 4:26-34 “It’s a Mystery to Me!”

June 14, 2026    Mark 4:26-34      “It’s a Mystery to Me!”

We live in a world that is getting more complex by the day.  Some of this is good and some not so good.  It is good to know things that are happening around the world as they are happening.  This is nice to know but there are many stories we hear that we really don’t have to hear.  What a farmer does in Ethiopia or if a peace officer pulls his gun or not is probably no concern of mine.  There are many stories that really don’t matter much to us.  Technology is also more complex than ever.  It used to be that when a person was a lad like I was in the 50’s & 60’s, you could take things apart to see what made them tick.  A prime example is a carburetor on a car.  You used to be able to take one apart and figure it out.  I talked with a fellow just a while back who tried to take a new one apart to repair it.  He told me never to do this because he had to get professional help to put it back together.  We used to fix things on our computers or the electronics on our TVs, microwaves, radios, etc.  Now these small items are so complex that we either replace a whole board or buy the item new and junk the old.  We just don’t understand all the things today like we used to in a simpler world.  Today we are reading in Mark about what the kingdom of God is like.  Let’s see if we are on the right track because it is quite simple.

Tim Zingale tells the story that could have happened a few of years back when it was so dry throughout the Midwest.  Do you remember that?  Then we had a 3” rain in July that brought our crops through.  Most areas for hundreds of miles around had crop failure due to lack of rain.  In one church there was nothing left to do so the pastor suggested that they pray for rain.  Well, they prayed and prayed during that Sunday service.  Then the pastor told them to be sure to come back next Sunday and they would thank the Lord for the rain.

Well, the next Sunday came along and everyone came to church.  The pastor met the people and finally could contain his anger no longer.  The people were baffled by this until the pastor said, “Where are your umbrellas?  How can we thank God for the rain if you don’t even have the confidence to bring your umbrellas?”  Well, I’m not going to talk about rain today so you won’t need your umbrellas.  We should bring parasols instead.  However, sometimes we leave our faith umbrellas at home when we shouldn’t.

Today, we are going to talk about the Kingdom of God as we look at 2 parables.  First, we might want to know just what is the Kingdom of God?  This might be a little hard to understand as you have heard me say many times that Satan rules this world.  Well, Satan does rule this world but he can only do this as long as God allows.  We have ‘free will’ given by God.  As long as we have this and we keep choosing Satan over God, Satan will rule.  However, when Jesus finally returns, Satan will be gone as he is a subject of God.  The Kingdom of God includes this world even if Satan rules at the moment.  The Kingdom of God is all of His creation.  It’s the world, heaven and the universe.  It’s everything.  Hopefully that helps us to know that all things are in the Kingdom of God.

So we kind of know in our heads what the Kingdom of God is but the question is ‘what is the Kingdom of God like?’  Most people in those olden days had some tie with agriculture.  That is why Jesus refers to seeds and fruits and other ag products in many of His stories and parables.  These people understood it.  I would almost guess that all of us understand the world of agriculture living out here in rural North Dakota.

So this is what the Kingdom of God is like.  A man walks along and scatters seed on the ground.  This was how they planted in those days.  They scattered seed and covered it.  At least I think they covered it as it never really tells us.  I would guess that these ancient farmers had the same ingenuity that we do today.  They just had little less knowledge of farming practices.  Basically, this is what we do today also.  We have planters that plant many rows of corn all at once.  You plant it, cover it and fertilize it in one passage.  We have come a long way doing basically the same thing.

Then comes the interesting part; the part that we don’t always like because we don’t understand it.  For the most part things are exactly the same today as then.  It doesn’t matter one bit if it is day or night.  It doesn’t matter if you are awake or asleep.  Here’s one for all of us.  It doesn’t matter if you worry about it or not.  The seed that we scatter or plant will sprout and grow.  We are no longer a part of this process.  For the most part we have no control once the seed is in the ground.

This is the same way as it is when we plant the seed of Jesus Christ in someone.  I’m sure when Pastor’s Rick and Debra planted seeds in me, they never dreamed I would be a fellow pastor with them.  I have no idea what you will do with the gifts that God has given you.  I had no idea that someone would rise up and bring clothing to the poor.  I had no idea we had people who would rise up and build a new church.  I had no idea that someone would give us $1,000 a month to give away for local missions.

When God gets unleashed in our lives, we don’t know where it will go.  God does but we don’t.  God knows everything about the seed we planted but we don’t.  I can go around to each one of you will have a different story.  When I first started thinking about a revival meeting years ago, I figured I was getting in over my head.  Then it got to be less than 2 months away, I knew for sure that I’m was way over my head.  All I could do was trust God that He would lead me to where ever that went.  By the way, the focus on those meetings was not strictly those who don’t know Jesus.  Probably the biggest focus was on those who already knew Him but had been silent, those who had back slid, attending to their own whims until they felt that Jesus was not with them.  It was for those who for some reason or other were not following what Jesus had been telling them.  We prayed that people would come forward each night to claim or reclaim Jesus.  And some did.  Revival should be for everyone.

But back to the Scripture; the soil is the catalyst for this process of sprouting and growing.  First comes the stalk, then the head and then the grain.  Even though we are pretty intelligent today, I would guess that no one can really explain why this works.  This is how God works and only God knows exactly how it works.

For example, in 1858 a Sunday School teacher led a shoe clerk to give his life to Christ.  The shoe clerk was D.L. Moody, who became a tremendous evangelist.  Moody later set the heart on fire for Christ in one F.B. Meyer who went to campuses to preach.  His preaching reached Wilbur Chapman who hired Billy Sunday to help him do evangelical work.  Billy Sunday held a revival in North Carolina where 30 men dedicated some of their time for prayer.  The leader of this group, Vernon Patterson prayed, “Out of Charlotte, NC the Lord would raise up someone to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth.”  This group then had another revival meeting where they asked Mordeci Ham, a fiery Southern evangelist, to speak.  A farmer lent his land to the group for this meeting.  His name was Franklin Graham and his son Billy became a Christian during this meeting.  Only God knew what seed was being planted back in 1858 in Boston.

People, don’t be afraid of what God will do for you if you totally surrender to Him.  I was scared to death to do a revival meeting because I’ve never done anything like this before.  I did not know what I was doing.  All I could do is trust that Jesus would lead the way.  And I did.  That is all you have to do also.  You may not have to preach in front of a bunch of people.  You may only have to build a building or deliver some clothes or talk a neighbor into joining you at a revival meeting.  Then let go and let God do His thing.  He will do it and do it well, very well.

The second parable is very similar to the first.  Again we are talking about farming.  What is the Kingdom of God like?  It’s like a seed that falls on the ground and we have no control over its growth.  Then Jesus tells us that it is like a mustard seed.  It has the smallest seed which grows into that largest plant in the garden.  I’m sure that mustard was used as a seasoning then like it is today.  I really can’t imagine any other use for it.

I have always struggled with this passage.  I wasn’t raised on a farm like you have today.  We didn’t have the ways that you have today to control weeds.  We used to have to spray for mustard or it would take over the field.  It was a weed.  The first time I saw a field of mustard that had been planted for the mustard crop, I was beside myself.  Here we had been trying to get rid of mustard and then they turn around and plant mustard for our tables.  This is just an observation and has nothing to do with our passage.

The Kingdom of God is like having the smallest seed in the world, that will grow up into the largest plant.  Just think of the mighty oak tree.  From one little acorn comes a huge tree of great hard wood; from a small acorn!  Or think about how a pine cone must go through fire before it will sprout and produce a pine tree!  There is absolutely no way that science can explain all these little quirks of nature unless they say that God has done these things.  Anyway, the mustard seed grows up to be so big that birds can sit on or under it for shade.  My dad would have a fit if a mustard plant every got that big in one of his fields.

This is how we all start out.  We start out as a small mustard seed.  We all know that unless the plant dies and the seed falls to the ground we will have nothing.  But if we die then the seeds will grow.  John tells us about this.  We all start out a seed.  There was a seed in Boston that decades later produced Billy Graham.  So we all start out small and the trouble comes when we decide to stay small by not accepting the mystery of Jesus Christ.  How many people do you know who are still a small seed that has never fallen to the ground?

Here’s what He means.  You start out as a tiny mustard seed.  You go through life and you remain just a seed.  You find that your life is going nowhere.  You have no fulfillment.  You have no satisfaction.  You have been living your life for say the last 40 years and you have absolutely nothing to show for it.  You might have lots of money or fame but inside you are as empty as a dry well.  One day someone comes along and tells you about Jesus.  Oh, you’ve heard about Him before but you really didn’t pay a lot of attention.  This time something catches your fancy about Jesus and you investigate.  Before long you have accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.

Or maybe you’ve accepted Jesus when you were young but you have grown away from God and into the ways of the world where there is nothing but emptiness.  You find that you have been sitting in the pew for years and not really paying attention as your life has flown by you.  You might have sprouted some time ago, but you never allowed yourself to be in Christ.  You are just as miserable as the person who has never known God because you didn’t allow yourself to grow in God.  You fell upon the hard path.  So you have now decided at say age 45 to rededicate yourself to Jesus.  You are a seed that is now in fertile ground.

Suddenly you feel different.  This isn’t like when you accepted Jesus as a kid.  This is different.  Or if you have never done this before, you just suddenly feel so different, so good.  You have never felt like this before.  The next thing you know you are reading your Bible and enjoying it.  You try to learn as much as you can about Jesus.  You find yourself volunteering to help others and you feel good about it.  I could keep going talking about all the wonderful feelings and good things you will be doing because your little mustard seed has sprouted and is growing.  It is growing and producing other seeds.  When you start to follow Jesus full time, you will find the most fulfilled life that you can ever have.  In over 35 years I have never regretted this decision even when Jesus was telling me to lead a revival meeting that I know nothing about.  I could only do what I have done in the past and trust Jesus.

The key to this passage is trust Jesus.  We weren’t made to know why all things work.  We have to just trust Jesus that they do.  When you plant a seed, it will come up and God will do the work.  That’s a mystery to me.  Why do such small seeds produce such big results?  Once again, it’s a mystery to me.  We get so caught up thinking that we are in charge of things when we really know very little about them.  In all the things of this world, trust in Jesus.

You were never made to understand this world.  You were made to glorify Jesus Christ through the things of this world.  Don’t worry about what’s going on in the natural world.  Just let Jesus get a hold of you and trust Him that He knows what He is doing.  You will then begin a most incredible journey.  It will be a mystery to you but it will be glorious.  And thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.