MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 4:30-34
(PARALLELS: Matthew 13:31-32; Luke 13:18-19.)
The rise and progress of Christianity.—
I. Christianity is insignificant in its beginning.—
1. Its Founder assumed a humble form.
2. Its first advocates were obscure.
3. Its sphere of action was confined.
4. Its first converts were few.
5. Its mode of operation was unassuming.
6. Its reception was unpopular.
II. Christianity is gradual in its progress—
1. The difficulties with which it has to contend are tremendous.
2. The means which it adopts are moral.
3. The change which it attempts is radical.
4. The field in which it works is extensive.
5. The time at its disposal is long.
6. The results which it contemplates are eternal.
III. Christianity will be great in its consummation.—
1. It will be the mightiest display of God’s energy.
2. It will be the holiest manifestation of God’s character.
3. It will be the truest exhibition of God’s faithfulness.
4. It will be the wisest revelation of God’s intelligence.
5. It will be the most benevolent expression of God’s love.
6. It will be the sublimest source of God’s glory.
(1) It will be the acknowledged instrument of His complete overthrow of sin.
(2) It will be time’s sole surviving wonder for the admiration of the spiritual universe.
(3) It will be the redeemed’s theme of sweetest song of gratitude to God.
(4) It will be the climax of Christ. Then God will be all in all.
Lessons.—
1. Despise not the day of small things.
2. Exercise patience.
3. Be active.
4. Draw upon the glorious future.—B. D. Johns.
I. The comparative insignificance of Christianity at the first.—
1. Contrast the gorgeous ritual of the Temple with the unostentatious worship inculcated by Christ.
2. Contrast the elaborate systems of philosophers with the simple teaching of our Lord.
3. Contrast the social position of the priests with that of the apostles.
4. Contrast the multitudes who followed priests and philosophers with the few who were the disciples of Jesus.
II. The careful implantation of Christianity.—
1. Not a handful, but a solitary seed (Acts 4:12).
2. Not accidentally but designedly sown. Christ personally performed the work.
3. In a chosen and appropriate spot.
III. The rapid growth of Christianity.—
1. In three or four centuries it had spread so far and wide that Christians were found in Rome, Asia Minor, Greece, Syria, Russia, Germany, Gaul, Persia, Armenia, Egypt, Arabia, Abyssinia, and indeed in almost every known land.
2. It became so great a tree, that persecution could not uproot or even injure it; so great, that the eyes of three continents looked on in amazement; so great, that the trees of idolatry and superstition had no room for growth.
3. Every obstacle malice could throw in its way had been employed. All classes laid their axe to its root. Philosophers brought their satire, priests their anathemas, kings their laws. All in vain. The tree not only resisted every blow, but shattered to atoms every axe which assailed it. Its devotees were nailed to crosses, and, dying, cried, “It must grow.” Thousands at the stake exulted as they said, “We burn, but it cannot wither.”
IV. The natural phenomenon resulting.— Mark 4:32 ult. Observe, the very same class of men who sought to destroy Christianity at its introduction afterward gladly espoused it for their own personal ends. The tree was planted by God to give shelter to the weary and sad; it was not designed for such birds of prey; and sooner or later all the mercenary ones shall be driven away by the power of Him who planted it.—R. A. Griffin.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 4:30-32. Christianity a living organism.—Hitherto the Christian kingdom has been represented by a crowd of distinct though similar cornplants—contiguous yet individual. Now the deeper truth is hinted at that all Christian men and women make up in some sense a single living organism, with its root deep hid in the earth, of whose fatness we all partake. It enters into the very idea of a tree that its various parts are the outcome of the same life-force, which originally was shut up in a tiny unpromising seed, which yet before it has spent itself creates that umbrageous fruitful whole, from gnarled root to topmost, outmost twig. The glories of midsummer leafage, on which the breezes play low airs, while the sunbeams dance a dance of green and gold; riches of autumn berry dropping to the gatherer’s hand; subtle harmony of curve as the boughs lean to balance one another; mystic new birth as often as the spring sends a reviving tide of sap through every branch; unwearied effort to put forth fresh lines of growth from each budding point; while the records of a hundred seasons of storm and contest and victorious life are graven on its furrowed sides and stubborn limbs,—how wonderful, how endless in delight and mystery, is the world of life to be found within a single tree; and yet its age-long growth and all its splendours come from the forces hid in one smooth brown rind over which a boy’s fingers could be clasped in sport! This beautiful figure for an organised community of men bound by a common life, sprung from small beginnings, and lasting through many generations—the figure of a tree—was not a new one in the hands of Jesus. He found it in the literature of His people. As far back as the age of the Captivity it had become usual with the great prophets to compare the kingdom of Judah to a vine, and the mighty empire which threatened it to a cedar tree. But the figure had disappeared from Hebrew literature till our Lord revived it in the words before us. With characteristic homeliness, He selects from the vegetable creation a plant whose lowly appearance contrasts strangely with the vine of Isaiah, the cedar of Ezekiel, or the olive of St. Paul. It was not for its homeliness, however, that He chose it, although conspicuously His emblems are all taken from the most familiar objects of common life. It was because, for another reason, it suited His purpose best. We measure roughly with the eye the power of growth which resides in a plant, by the disproportion we discover betwixt the smallness of the seed and the largeness of the perfect plant. When a comparatively minute seed develops into a comparatively big tree, you are much struck by the force of life there was in it. Now of this the mustard formed an excellent familiar instance. It was, in fact, the least of the seeds usually sown by people in Palestine, and therefore passed in the proverbial speech of the country-folk for the least thing in the world. Yet, strange to add, the full-grown mustard plant was “the largest of garden herbs”: nay, “greater than all herbs,” since sometimes it shot out branches so as to pass fairly beyond the rank of a “herb” and become quite a “tree,” under whose shadow the field birds could perch. Precisely so is it found growing wild to this day by the Lake of Galilee—a tall shrub, or dwarf tree, some ten feet in height. On this point of comparison rests the stress of the parable. Christianity is not only a creation of the Saviour’s own life; it is the work and monument of the most extraordinary spiritual force we know. The kingdoms of the world were round Him where He sat—relics of ancient empires, which, in their day, Ezekiel had likened to the grand mountain cedar, with a “shadowing shroud” and a lofty stature. Yet now these all lay “fallen” and “broken” and “left,” as Ezekiel had foretold; while over them towered one world-empire huger than any of its forerunners, whose very fragments constitute our modern empires. Rome filled the wide earth with its shade as He spoke. Tiny beside the mighty bulk of overshadowing Rome, as a very mustard seed, was this carpenter’s Son and the handful of followers He left behind Him. Yet who does not know how unexpectedly the little spiritual kingdom of Jesus grew up out of His own grave to develop the mightiest force which history has to tell of; how speedily it thrust out its branches into every land, and sent its roots along every water-course; how it reckons at this hour a larger census of citizens than the most populous of secular sovereignties? By its own inward force of Divine life did it grow so large. And still it grows, and sees the old poison plants of heathendom, beneath whose deadly boughs the people sat, droop and die around its feet, and welcomes to its grateful shade the wandering souls of men who crave for rest and for refreshing. It yields its fruit every month, and its leaves are for the healing of the nations.—J. O. Dykes, D.D.
A parable of promise.—This is a parable of promise, speaking to the heart and to the community. It says, “Hope for much, but expect it only little by little.” When Livingstone had measured his work and his powers, he said this as his last word: “It is but little we can do, but we lodge a protest in the heart against a vile system, and time may ripen it.” And whenever we do our best, and trust and pray our best, though that best be but little, still we also may hope that God will favour it, and that time will ripen it. For the little of our day is often the seed of much in a day to come; and no one who works in his place can tell what his work will grow to, or how much God may make of it.—T. F. Crosse, D.C.L.
Mark 4:33-34. The duties of the Christian teacher.—
1. He must adapt himself to his hearers. Are they young? are they educated? are they courageous? are they surrounded by any peculiar circumstances?
2. He must consider his hearers rather than himself. This was Jesus Christ’s method. The question should be, not what pleases the preacher’s taste, but what is most required by the spiritual condition of the people.
3. He must increase his communication of truth and light according to the progress of his scholars. Reticence is power. In teaching children the teacher should not dazzle them by the splendour of his attainments; he adapts the light to the strength of their mental vision. The preacher should always know more of Divine truth than the hearer. Christ’s method of imparting knowledge is, so far as we can infer, unchanged. He has yet more light to shed upon His Word.—J. Parker, D.D.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 4
Mark 4:31-32. Great things from small.—Many great histories of blessing may be traced back to a very small seed. A woman whose name is forgotten dropped a tract or little book in the way of a man named Richard Baxter. He picked it up and read it, and it led him to Christ. He became a man of saintly life, and wrote a book entitled A Call to the Unconverted, which brought many persons to the Saviour, and among others Philip Doddridge. Philip Doddridge in his turn wrote The Rise and Progress of Religion, which led many into the kingdom of God, among them the great Wilberforce. Wilberforce wrote A Practical View of Christianity, which was the means of saving a multitude, including Legh Richmond. In his turn Richmond wrote The Dairyman’s Daughter, which has been instrumental in the conversion of thousands. The dropping of that one little tract seemed a very small thing to do; but see what a wonderful, many-branched tree has sprung from it!
Faith in the power of truth.—When Charles Darwin wrote his Origin of Species, did he believe it would be received by the scientific world? Most certainly he did. But the scientific world, with rare exceptions, received it with a storm of derision and opposition. To others it was the height of unreason. But to him it was not unreasonable. Where was the difference? He knew it best, saw its truth, and therefore had faith in its acceptance, and in some thirty years the scientific world has, in the main, come round to his belief. They who know Christianity best have most faith in its power to upheave the world. It still requires a great deal of faith to believe that the world will actually become a Christian world. This is partly because the world has always been a stiff soil for any kind of noble husbandry. It is slow to yield its produce, and there are some terribly tough roots to be stubbed up. It is partly because of imperfection in the means employed. But God works by imperfect means, or how would He use men at all? He wins His victories with maimed soldiers. The workmen have all manner of crotchets of their own, and all manner of ridiculous notions of the shape of the building, and a nice piece of architecture it would be if all their structures were to stand; but the Divine Architect has His plan matured in heavenly wisdom, and He will look to it with sleepless eye that the New Jerusalem keeps its symmetry. What one man with a crotchet has built awry or with perishable material, He sends another man with an opposite crotchet to pull down, and, as there is a little bit of right work in every worker, He takes that out of him too, and the fair structure rises in impregnable righteousness.—G. T. Candlin.
Seed served by the tempests.—Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, when obliged to quit the city in consequence of increasing persecutions, went with one of his disciples to a region in the vicinity. In the cool of the evening the bishop was walking under the shade of the magnificent trees which stood in front of his rural abode; here he found his disciple sitting under an oak tree, leaning his head upon his hand, and weeping. Then the old man said, “My son, why weepest thou?” The disciple replied, “Shall I not mourn and weep when I think of the kingdom of truth upon earth? Tempests are gathering round it, and will destroy it. Many of its adherents have become apostates, and have denied and abused the truth, proving that unworthy men may confess it with their lips, though their hearts are far from it. This fills my heart with sorrow and my eyes with tears.” Then Polycarp smiled and answered, “My son, the kingdom of Divine truth is like unto a tree which a man reared in his garden. He set the seed secretly and quietly in the ground and left it; the seed put forth leaves, and the young tree grew up among weeds and thorns. Soon the tree reared itself above them, and the weeds died, because the shadow of the branches overcame them. The tree grew, and the wind blew on it and shook it, but its roots clung firmer and firmer to the ground, taking hold of the rocks downward, and its branches reached unto heaven. Thus the tempest served to increase the firmness and strength of the tree. When it grew higher, and its shadow spread farther, then the thorns and weeds grew again round the tree, but it heeded them not in its loftiness. There it stood, in calm, peaceful grandeur—a tree of God!”
Triumph of the gospel.—Far out in the western main is a little island round which for nearly half the year the Atlantic clangs his angry billows, keeping the handful of inhabitants close prisoners. Most of it is bleak and barren; but there is one little bay rimmed round with silvery sand, and reflecting in its waters a slope of verdure. Towards this bay one autumn evening, thirteen hundred years ago, a rude vessel steered its course. It was a flimsy bark, no better than a huge basket of osiers covered over with the skins of beasts; but the tide was tranquil, and as the boatmen plied their oars they raised the voice of psalms. Skimming across the bay, they beached their coracle and stepped on shore—about thirteen in number. On the green slope they built a few hasty huts and a tiny Christian temple. The freight of that little ship was the gospel, and the errand of the saintly strangers was to tell benighted heathen about Jesus and His love. From the favoured soil of Ireland they had brought a grain of mustard seed, and now they sowed it in Iona. In the conservatory of their little church it throve, till it was fit to be planted out on the neighbouring mainland. To the Picts with their tattooed faces, to the Druids peeping and muttering in their dismal groves, the missionaries preached the gospel. That gospel triumphed. The groves were felled, and where once they stood rose the house of prayer. Planted out on the bleak moorland, the little seed became a mighty tree, so that the hills of Caledonia were covered with the shade; nor must Scotland ever forget the seedling of Iona, and the labours of Columba with his meek Culdees.
The Church’s expansion.—There is a fairy tale which speaks of a magic tent, no bigger than a walnut shell, whose powers were very wonderful. Placed in the king’s audience chamber, it expanded into a gorgeous canopy over his throne. Placed in the courtyard, it became a spacious tent, which provided accommodation for the royal household. Placed without the gates, it widened its borders until the plain was covered by a glistening encampment, beneath whose shelter a great army might find ample room. And so it was capable of infinite expansion according to the requirements of its owner. Well, that magic tent may serve as an emblem of the Church of Christ. At first it was only a little one, but with every year it has expanded, and widened its borders, and become more ample and majestic. Multitudes whom no man can number, from every nation under heaven, have sought its shelter. And it shall continue to grow until all the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of God and of His Christ.