And he said, How should we liken the kingdom of God, or with what comparison should we compare it?
The Lord's last parable in this chapter opens with a question, not a statement. That question, and the tiny seed He answers with, show what the kingdom of God would look like on earth while the King Himself was away.
He says "we," not "I." The word is small, but it is deliberate.
Only Mark's Gospel has this beautiful expression, which joins the apostles with the Servant of Jehovah in divine ministry. Matthew and Luke both give the pronoun in the singular: "To what shall I compare it?" And in fact the Lord, as we know, supplied the comparison Himself. He needed no prompting from the twelve. Yet it is good for us, as it was for them, to learn the lowly grace of the Saviour. He put the matter this way so that the apostles might learn that they were chosen to share His service of declaring the kingdom of God.
He often drew them in like this, and never because He was short of an answer:
When emergencies arose He at times consulted them as to what should be done. Not that He needed advice from any, but to question them as He did was to educate them in the understanding (1) of their own natural inability in matters of the kind, and (2) of the vast resources at their Master's command. For example, seeing the hungry crowds He asked Philip, "Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?" — yet He Himself knew what He would do (John 6:5-6). He spoke of His plans the same way: "Let us go across to the other side" (Mark 4:35).
Mark's picture of the kingdom is shorter than Matthew's, and it turns on the time when the King is away.
Here we do not find the whole story of the kingdom, as we do in Matthew 13. We find only its great principles: the Lord's work, set against His public appearing and the setting up of the kingdom by His own presence. It grows during His absence, and no one knows how — at least as far as human knowledge goes.
The Lord picked a seed known for being tiny.
Though small in this country, the shrub reaches a good size in the southern lands where Palestine lies. Travellers report seeing it grow as high as a man on horseback. This is no great height for a tree. But remember: the main feature of the comparison is not the huge bulk of the tree. It is how tiny the seed is next to what it later becomes. Judging by the size of the seed, you would expect no more than a garden herb. In fact it becomes a tree.
In Scripture a spreading tree can stand for earthly power. The prophets had already used the picture for the great empires.
One of the prophets compared the Assyrian empire to a cedar of Lebanon, taller than all the trees of the field. The birds of the heavens nested in its boughs, and great nations lived in its shadow. The same prophet applied the picture to Pharaoh and the armies of Egypt (Ezekiel 31). The rapid rise and vast reach of the Babylonian empire came to its king, Nebuchadnezzar, in a dream, as a tree that "grew and became strong, and its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth" (Daniel 4).
The size is no triumph. What settles in the branches tells the real story.
At its beginning Christianity was very small in man's sight, like a "grain of mustard seed." In the hands of man it becomes a great power on the earth. But in its greatness, it becomes a shelter for evil. "The birds of the air make nests in its shade." That which at the beginning gathered souls out of this world around the Lord, in the end becomes a vast system which shelters every evil thing.
The Lord warned His workers in advance, so that growth would not fool them.
This taught them that great size would be the result. The Lord's work would not keep its first simplicity and small extent. Yet spiritual power is the real greatness, and the only true greatness in this world. The moment anything in the Lord's work becomes striking to the natural eye, you can be sure that false principles have somehow got a footing inside.
- Question — Mark alone has "we." The Lord framed the question so the twelve apostles would know they shared His service.
- Seed — The kingdom grows while the King is away. The gap between the tiny seed and the tree is the whole point.
- Tree — In the prophets a spreading tree means earthly power: Assyria, Egypt, Babylon. Now the kingdom takes that shape in man's hands.
- Birds — Greatness brings lodgers. What began by gathering souls out of the world ends as a system that shelters evil.
- Warning — Real greatness is spiritual power. When the work looks impressive to the natural eye, look inside for the false principle that let it grow.
As to a grain of mustard [seed], which, when it is sown upon the earth, is less than all seeds which are upon the earth,
The Lord looks for a picture of the kingdom of God, and He picks the smallest seed a farmer sows. What does such a small start grow into? And is the huge growth that follows a triumph or a warning?
The point of the comparison is not the height the plant reaches but the gap between what is sown and what appears.
The mustard shrub is small in this country. But in the warmer south, where Palestine lies, it grows to a good size. Travellers report seeing it as tall as a man on horseback. That is no great height for a tree. But remember the main feature of the comparison. It is not the huge bulk of the tree. It is how small the seed is next to what it later becomes.
The seed is not just an image of small beginnings. It points to how the faith itself started.
Christianity, a little seed, the seed of a man despised by the world, has become a great power upon the earth, and spreads its branches everywhere.
That smallness was not an accident of timing. It matched the One who planted it.
At its beginning the kingdom bore the character of its Founder. He "made Himself nothing." He came not to be served but to serve. He taught His disciples that the least among them, the one who could become the servant of all, was the greatest. The apostles understood their Lord's teaching and obeyed it. As a result they became "like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things."
The verse calls the mustard the smallest of all seeds. One writer narrows that to the seeds people plant, and then looks at what grows.
The mustard is called the least of all the seeds — of the ones that people plant, I take it. The growth here is abnormal. In nature a mustard seed never becomes a great tree. People may treat this natural growth as if it were divine and perfect. Yet any simple soul can see that the growth is abnormal.
The size it reaches makes it useful to guests it was never planted for.
The teaching of the parable is that the kingdom of God would become raised up in the earth and suitable for agents of Satan to find protection under its shadow…
The birds are not left to guesswork. The Lord had already used the same word in an earlier parable.
The Lord Himself tells us, in the earlier parable, who the "birds of the air" are. It is the same word used in both places. As the sower sowed the seed, the birds came and devoured it. The Lord explains it: "When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart." So by the birds of the air that devour the seed, the Lord means Satan and his angels.
Commentators differ on how dark the picture is. Some read the spreading branches as the gospel's genuine reach.
It seemed a small thing to men when the Saviour of the world lay as a Baby in Bethlehem's manger… At first the preaching of the gospel reached no further than the cities of Israel. Yet even in the days of the apostles it went into all the world, to every creature under heaven. And, according to the Lord's own word, men came from the east and the west and the north and the south, and sat down in the kingdom. God chose the weak things of the world to shame what was mighty.
The Lord gave this parable to guide His servants. They needed to know what to expect, and what not to trust.
The grain of mustard seed was there merely to show the great change from a little beginning into a vast system. That hint was all-important for the guidance of the servants. They were taught that material size would be the result, instead of the work of the Lord keeping its first simplicity and small extent. Spiritual power is the real greatness, and the only true greatness in this world. The moment anything at all in the Lord's work becomes striking to men's eyes, you may be sure that false principles have somehow got a footing within.
- Seed — the point is the gap between the tiny thing sown and what stands there later. It is not the tree's height.
- Smallness — the kingdom began like its Founder, who made Himself nothing. His followers were counted the scum of the world.
- Swelling — a garden plant becoming a tree is growth against its own nature. Size here is no proof that all is well.
- Shelter — birds nest in the branches. In the earlier parable the Lord said the birds stand for Satan and his angels.
- Standard — writers differ. Some see the gospel reaching the world; others see a system grown worldly. Either way, the true greatness is spiritual power, not visible size.
and when it has been sown, mounts up and becomes greater than all herbs, and produces great branches, so that the birds of heaven can roost under its shadow.
The third of Mark's seed parables measures the kingdom of God by size, not by fruit: the smallest of seeds becomes a plant with branches wide enough for birds to shelter in. Commentators read that growth as history rather than praise, and they press one question — who are the birds?
The two earlier parables in this chapter look toward a harvest. This one does not.
All three parables in this chapter picture the ministry of the kingdom of God by the Servant of Jehovah under the figure of growing seed. The first shows that fruitfulness depended on how suitable the soil was where the seed fell. The second shows that the seed's growth and final fruitfulness owed nothing at all to human help. In the third parable, however, quite a different feature stands out. It says nothing about fruit for God, which will matter so much in the day of harvest. It brings forward the man-ward side of the kingdom, not the Godward side. The rapidly growing tree is the look the kingdom was to take on in human eyes.
Scripture already used the great tree as its picture of world empire.
What had been sown as a grain of mustard seed becomes a great tree; a symbol that represents a great power on the earth. The Assyrian, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, are set before us in the word as great trees. The kingdom would take that form. It began small, through the word sown by the Lord, and later by His disciples. What this seed produced would slowly grow into a great power. It would make itself prominent on the earth, so that others would shelter under it, as birds shelter under the branches of a tree. This has, indeed, been the case.
Mark 4 has told us once already what birds do to seed. That earlier scene supplies the meaning here.
At full growth the tree becomes the haunt of independent agents. They do not come out of the seed as fruit would. They are wholly separate from the tree as a living thing. The birds find protection in the tree, but they are in no sense part of it. When it was a seed, they were its natural enemies. The first parable shows the birds eating the good seed in some cases. The Lord took that act of destruction to mean that Satan sometimes carries away the word of the gospel after it is preached. So suppose the birds of the air in the first parable stand for the agents of the devil. Then in the third parable of the same series we may fairly take them to stand for powers of evil.
One writer finds a greater surprise still in who ends up sheltering in the branches.
Here is the "mystery": what is sown as "the smallest of all seeds" becomes a tree. In other words, Christianity was little and despised among men at its beginning, and it becomes great and glorious on the earth. That religion began with the death of Christ as a criminal. What greater mystery could there be than to see it linked with all the dignity, wealth, power and splendour of this world? Only one thing could be stranger. By this remarkable change, the birds find shelter in the branches of the tree that began with the sowing of the seed — the same birds whose first work was to snatch the seed away before it took root.
Another writer weighs what that greatness costs.
In man's hands Christianity becomes a great power on the earth, and in its greatness it becomes a shelter for evil. What at the beginning gathered souls out of this world around the Lord, in the end becomes a vast system which shelters every evil thing.
Where, then, does the Church belong?
Christianity is essentially a heavenly system. The Church of God does not belong to the present evil world, but to the scene of glory where Christ dwells. Christians once walked apart from the way things go here, with hearts devoted to their Lord. Their testimony was unmistakable, and God could bless it to the salvation of souls. Then the Christian community became influential on the earth. Its spiritual usefulness declined, and it became a powerful tool in the hands of Satan.
- Seed. The kingdom starts small, sown by the Lord and then by His disciples. Nothing in that beginning promises greatness on earth.
- Growth. This parable measures the man-ward side only: how big the thing looks, not what fruit it bears for God.
- Shelter. In Scripture a great tree pictures world power — the Assyrian, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar. Others come to lodge under its branches.
- Birds. Mark 4 has already named them: the agents who snatched the seed away. What once attacked the seed now nests in the tree.
- Call. Influence on earth was never the aim. God blesses separation from the world and hearts devoted to Christ.