Thank you for listening to this message from Life House Church.
Good morning, good morning, good morning.
Turn to somebody beside you, give them a high five, tell them Merry Christmas or you can
give them a fist bump or an elbow bump.
I heard that's the thing today.
Just tell them, hello, Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas to West Shore, East Shore, our online group.
We got folks listening all over the place and it's good to be with you.
It is December.
It is Christmas time.
It is the month that we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, His entry into this earth,
right?
God with us, Emmanuel, the message of Jesus.
You know, Jesus came to complete the plan of God for all of mankind.
I don't know if you realize that or not, but that was the completion.
That was the link.
That's what reconciled us back to God and we should be filled with nothing but hope
at this time of year because Christ showed up because He came because hope is for real,
right?
That's my message to you.
Look over to the sides, look on the screen.
Hope is for real.
Turn to somebody, give them a high five.
I won't do this too many times today.
Tell them hope is for real.
It really is.
And listen, this hope is not an instantaneous hope.
It's not a momentary hope.
It's not, how many know it's not the cheesy Hallmark hope?
Anybody watching cheesy Hallmark movies yet?
Come on, raise your hand.
Yeah, I know, some of you have been doing it, right?
It's not the hyped up hope.
It's not the, just the Christmas season hope.
It is hope for real.
It's hope that creates everlasting change.
It really is everlasting life too.
And we need this hope in the world.
You need this hope.
I need this hope.
Our neighbors need this hope.
We need the expectation of a desired godly outcome.
We really do.
We need to know that all is not lost, right?
Despite what's happening around us in the world.
We need to know that evil will not ultimately triumph.
We need to know that.
Every time I watch the news or every time I read the news, I don't watch a whole lot
of it anymore.
I do more reading than I do watching.
I need to know that evil is not going to prevail because a lot of times it's, I feel like that's
all it's on there is evil, right?
We need hope in Jesus.
And I came this morning to tell you that in December we're going to talk about hope.
We're going to talk about how hope is for real in Jesus Christ.
It really is.
And we're going to start this December, this Christmas, Jesus hope in the book of Matthew.
So if you've got your Bibles, you can turn to Matthew chapter 13.
And if not, they're going to put it up on the screens.
Maybe you got to look at it on your device.
And we're going to talk about what hope for real looks like.
And I'm going to ask you to do something.
I challenge you to start doing something.
Maybe you not done this in the past, but maybe think about doing this and that's take notes.
Now, I'm not saying that because I'm preaching.
I'm saying that because the word of God is the word of God.
And you never know during a gathering, if God's going to speak to you, if the Holy Spirit's
going to give you a revelation on something that said, he's going to speak something into
your spirit.
Sometimes people come up to me and they're like, pastor, the Holy Spirit spoke his into
my spirit.
I'm like, I didn't even preach on that.
Right?
I'm speaking to him while the while the service is going on about something completely different.
You never know.
And here's the thing.
If you don't write it down, sometimes you forget.
Anybody forget if they don't write something down.
Yeah, most of you.
Right?
We forget.
Sometimes you forget the details.
So take notes.
I see some of you do it, but just get ready because God might speak something in your
spirit.
That's how the word of God is.
It's not me.
It's the word of God.
Matthew chapter 13 lets us know some of the hidden hope in Jesus.
It is hidden in the parables.
Jesus many times spoke in parables.
He told stories.
Jesus told parables to believers and it was this secret messages kind of threaded in those
parables that he spoke.
He stories the word of God says it was actually mysteries that are from the foundation of
the earth were wrapped up in these parables.
And I kind of call it this morning.
I call it the hope code and a lot of the parables there's hope code and it is so vital because
it answers questions that will drain us of hope if they go unanswered.
Do you know that some questions you ask will drain you of hope if they go unanswered long
enough?
Sometimes if we can't get our questions answered and that question plagues us long enough, hope
begins to fade.
Whatever it is.
Right?
So if we ask a question and young people do this all the time, right?
They get a boyfriend or they get a girlfriend, you know, and they're like, do they love me
or do they like me a lot?
I don't know which one of those.
Right?
And if they don't get an answer to that over a long enough period of time, hope begins
to fade that that might be the case.
Right?
Will life ever get better?
People I've heard people say that will life ever get better?
Will whatever change?
And if you don't get some kind of answer to that, hope begins to fade.
If I ask the question, is my wife going to make my favorite chocolate chip cookies after
supper if I ask her that question and she doesn't answer me, my hope fades.
Okay.
It fades away.
Proverbs 13 12 says this hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled as
a tree of life.
Jesus answers questions in his parables and it gives us hope and he does not leave us
heart sick.
He does not leave us hanging on the hook in the parables for believers.
He reveals the secrets that have been kept literally from the foundations of the earth
and it's so that your heart doesn't get sick.
He said it this way in Matthew 13 34, all these things, Jesus spoke to the multitude
in parables and without a parable, he did not speak to them that it might be fulfilled,
which was spoken by the prophet saying, I will open my mouth in parables.
I will utter things kept secret from the foundation of the world.
The parables give us answers to the questions that make my hope rise.
It brings hope to us and we might not love every answer.
I can tell you that right now.
You're going to find answers sometime in scripture.
You're not going to love the answer, but at least you have the answer.
How many know you can go forward if you have the answer, right?
If you get sick and you get the diagnosis, at least you know what it is.
At least you know how to go forward in things.
If you don't know, you start to lose hope, right?
Jesus wants to give us the answers.
He wants to tell us and if you get the answer, you can deal, right?
No cookies today.
Which would be my next question would be how about brownies?
Hope for real.
So let's go to the code.
Matthew chapter 13 verse 31 says this, another parable he put forth to them saying the kingdom
of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed
is the least of all the seeds.
But when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree so that the birds
of the air come and nest in its branches.
Jesus tells a parable in 31 and says the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.
Before we dive into the discussion of the mustard seed, because that's the main subject
right of this story, we need to clarify something about the kingdom of heaven because in the
parables that I'm going to give you today, there's two parables, we're going to talk
about the kingdom of heaven and we're going to talk about the kingdom of God.
And you might say to yourself, well, I'm not really in the kingdom of heaven right now,
right?
I'm not in the kingdom of God right now.
That's a one day thing.
Someday when I die, I'm going to go to be with God.
You know, if I know Jesus is Lord and Savior, I'm going to be there and I'm going to understand
the kingdom of God.
I'll read about it a little bit in scripture, but I'm not really there.
You might say that to yourself, like I'm living in the kingdom of man right now.
I'm living in the kingdom of the flesh, right?
What does that really have to do with me?
Well, I'm going to say not so fast because if you look in Luke 17 20 says this, now when
he, Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered
them and said, the kingdom of God does not come with observation, nor will they say,
see here or see there for indeed the kingdom of God is within you.
Say that right now.
The kingdom of God is within me.
If you know Lord is Savior, Jesus is Lord and Savior, the kingdom of God is within you.
And when Jesus is talking kingdom, he's not just talking about the someday place.
That is the thing, right?
One day we're going to go be with him, but he's also talking about what's inside of us.
He's talking about what we carry in him.
And right now it's completely relevant for here and now.
So when we read these parables, when we get into these scriptures, it's here now.
So when Jesus talks kingdom, he's talking about the intersection between heaven and
earth.
He's talking about the intersection between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man.
He's talking about these kingdoms colliding together and always being interconnected.
And how many know that Jesus is Lord of both, right?
He's Lord, he's King of kings, Lord of lords.
Amen.
That's true.
It's true.
He's in control.
So Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like this.
It's a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in a field, which indeed is the least of all
the seeds.
But when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree so that the birds
of the air come and nest in its branches.
In his kingdom, we are mustard seed.
Right?
We're mustard seed that's planted in this world, in the field of this world.
It is the smallest of seeds.
Now they're going to put a picture up there.
You all take a look at that picture.
I may know that's a tiny seed, right?
That's your index finger.
That's a mustard seed.
That's the size of a mustard seed.
And it's the smallest of seeds, but it is an herb and it grows greater than all the
other herbs.
When that mustard seed grows, a lot of times they literally call it a tree.
It'll turn into a mustard tree.
And what is the mystery?
What is the hope for real in this parable?
That the kingdom of God in me, as I am planted in this world, can become something great.
It's not just a little tiny herb with a little tiny seed.
It can become something great.
If I have the greatness in me, if I have any kind of greatness in me, it's because the
kingdom of God is in me and it is not in this world, right?
And as I'm in this world, this little insignificant mustard seed can become a great tree.
And great things can happen in me and around me.
So much so that the word of God says that the birds of the air will come and nest in
its branches, that I can have that kind of impact on others, that this little seed in
a large and sometimes hostile world can grow and surpass the herbs that are growing around
me, that this little seed planted in the world can become strong.
This little seed planted in the world can become a haven for birds to nest in.
That those little seeds planted in this world that have the kingdom of God in them bring
hope.
That something great can come out of them.
Now, let me clarify this.
I will never be great.
Okay?
I'm never going to be great in me, but something great can come out of me if the kingdom of
God is in me.
It's God's plan.
Is there anything great in me as this little mustard seed?
Absolutely not.
It is only when the kingdom of God is coming out of me that something great takes place.
It's not the seed.
The seed doesn't do anything great.
It's God inside the seed.
It's the kingdom of God inside the seed.
It's not because the seed has anything significant.
And it's not because maybe I have some kind of potential to grow, right?
That self-help thing that we always talk about.
It's the king in the seed that makes it great.
It's the kingdom coming out of the seed.
It's how it works in the kingdom of God.
And why do we need to hear this message of hope?
Because sometimes people feel so insignificant.
Sometimes people feel so irrelevant.
Sometimes they feel so unqualified.
Sometimes we feel so small.
Sometimes we feel so hopeless.
Sometimes we feel like we've got literally nothing to offer anybody else, right?
That we can barely grow and survive on our own.
We're just these little herbs trying to make it through, right?
That how in the world could I even provide branches for anybody else to sit on when I
barely can take care of myself?
And I'm here to tell you, it's not the seed.
It's the kingdom of God that can do great things through the seed, through the plant.
Some of you work so hard to achieve some kind of greatness.
Can I tell you something?
Take a breath.
Do it right now.
Just breathe in.
Take a breath.
You're just a mustard seed.
It's the kingdom of God in you that does the great thing.
It is the kingdom of God coming out of you.
It's the kingdom that does the great and lasting thing, the eternal thing, the thing that can
change other people's lives, the things that will bring other people to come and nest.
It is the kingdom that is great.
And His greatness does not resemble worldly greatness, does it?
Worldly greatness is really all about me.
It's about my recognition.
It's about my fame.
It's all about what people see in me.
And that's not what this is.
God says if you're going to do greatness, right?
That's why Jesus said if you want to be great in the kingdom, you got to be servant of all.
He said that.
He said you got to be servant of all.
The kingdom of God is greatness in the kingdom is when the kingdom of God works through you
and out of you.
And it always points back to God.
The Lord did not plant you in this place to say this to begin and end as this little insignificant
seed.
He didn't die on a cross.
Jesus didn't die on a cross raised from the grave, right?
Ascended to heaven, said the Holy Spirit back to empower us so that you could see this insignificant
seed under the soil, right?
Hopefully, you know, just barely getting by.
That's not what he did.
Let me help you understand something about this hope.
The kingdom of God, everything that the kingdom of God touches grows.
Do you know that?
Everything that the kingdom of God touches strengthens everything that the kingdom of
God is near bears fruit.
Everything that the kingdom of God gets close to it brings provision.
It brings power.
It brings God.
And when the kingdom is inside of you, that is the greatness that can come out of you.
Don't chase the world's greatness.
Don't don't don't try to try to say, you know, I'm just going to keep improving my seed,
right?
Someday I'm going to be great.
Man, greatness is in him and what God can do in you.
Amen.
Mystery solved.
How do you get great?
Let the kingdom of God work through you and in you.
How do you get to a place where other people can come and land in your branches?
Let the kingdom of God come to you.
Jesus unpacked these mysteries in the parable.
Let me give you another one.
You ready for another one this morning?
I'm going to give you another parable.
Matthew 13, right?
A mystery held from the foundation of the earth.
Matthew 13 24.
He says this another parable he put forth to them saying, the kingdom of heaven is like
a man who sowed a seed in his field.
But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.
But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.
So the servants of the owner came and said to him, Sir, did you not grow a good seed
in your field?
Then how then does it have tares?
And he said to them, an enemy has done this.
The servant said to him, do you want me to go and gather them up?
But he said, no, lest while you gather up the tares, you will also uproot the wheat
with them.
Let both grow together until the harvest.
And at the time of harvest, I will say to the reapers, first gather together the tares
and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.
What life mystery is in this parable?
What hope does this bring to us?
What question is answered in this parable that drives hope within us and raises hope?
And I think the question this answers, a lot of people ask this all the time.
Why does the Lord allow evil to continue around us?
That's the question.
Anybody ever ask you that question?
As a follower of Jesus Christ, they ever ask you, why does your God let evil continue on
the face of the earth?
Anybody ever ask you that?
Right.
And if you ever stand beside somebody that's a shattered victim of some kind and some someone
who suffered great tragedy at the hands of evil and you're thinking yourself, right,
Lord, I don't understand this.
I don't get this.
Lord, can't you stop this?
Anybody with me?
Right.
Maybe you're all more spiritual than I am.
Right.
Stand beside a child that's been abused, maybe a woman who's been battered in some kind of
way.
I remember when I was young, a friend of mine, he had just gotten married and he had a house
and I remember standing outside his house and we were in the front yard one evening
talking and he had a neighbor that lived nearby there and it was a young lady about our same
age and I remember, I'll never forget this, she was walking up the street and she just
got into the light, the street light in front of his house while him and I were talking
and I see this young woman walking in the darkness and she's battered.
She's bruised.
She's bleeding and we're like, what?
And we ran down and said, what happened?
Her boyfriend got mad at her, beat her to a pulp and threw her out of the car.
She walked home and you want her like, God, just zap him.
Get him, Jesus.
Take him down.
Do whatever you got to do.
We think that and we're like, God, why don't you just get him?
We think that way.
Anybody else think that way?
Is it just me?
Yeah.
But if we look at Jesus' explanation of the parable and then we look at the parable itself
because he did explain this parable to his disciples because they asked the question,
we start to see the answer.
Matthew 13, 36 says this, when Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house
and his disciples came to him saying, explain to us the parable of the tares, of the field.
And he answered and said to them, now listen closely because you want to pick up on the
analogy here, right?
Because parables are an analogy.
He who sows the good seed is the son of man.
It's talking about Jesus himself, right?
The field is the world.
The good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one.
The enemy who sold them is the devil.
The harvest is the end of the age and the reapers are the angels.
Therefore the tares as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so will be at the
end of this age.
The son of man will send out his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all the
things that offend and all those who practice lawlessness and will cast them into a furnace
of fire.
There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth, then the righteous will shine forth as the
son in the kingdom of their father.
Who has ears to hear?
Let him hear.
Now if you couple that explanation that Jesus gave and you go back and read the parable
itself and say, so the servants of the owner came and said to him, sir, did you not sow
good seed in your field?
How then does it have tares?
And he said to them, an enemy has done this.
The servant said to him, do you want us to then go and gather them up?
But he said no.
Listen, while you gather the tares, you also uproot the wheat with them.
Let both grow together until the harvest.
And at the time of harvest, I will say to the reapers first gather together the tares
and bind them into bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.
Why does the Lord wait till the end of the age to deal with the sons of evil?
To stop evil itself, right?
To abolish unrighteousness, to stop hate, to stop violence and murder.
Why does he wait?
God allows both the wheat and the weeds to grow together until harvest so that both are
not destroyed.
That's what he tells us.
Because if he uproots the tear, which is a weed, while the weed is growing or while they're
both growing together, it will destroy the tear and the wheat.
Now I don't know if you've ever weeded a garden, if you've never farmed or never weeded a garden,
you'll just have to take my word for this.
But if you've ever weeded a garden, I grew up on a small farm, when you go out, my dad
would send us out and he'd say, we've got to go weed the garden, right?
And there might be small plants in there that were growing, carrots, whatever, peas, something
that would be growing out of the ground.
You'd have to pull the weeds up.
And if you've ever weeded, you've got to be extremely careful when you weed because if
you weed, if a weed is growing right next to the, to the wheat, right?
Or whatever it is that's planted in that garden, you pull it, what's it do?
It pulls up the earth, right?
And it pulls both up and it unearths both of them and it exposes roots and they both
come out of the ground and both are destroyed.
And what Jesus was saying in this, this farming analogy that he gave, the enemy has many evil
ones intertwined, right?
In the world, there are, there is a mix of people who are righteous and godly and following
the Lord and there are evil people in our earth, right?
On our earth, they're in our communities, they're around the world in every community.
They might even, some might even be in your family.
Come on.
You know, they might be in family, but God, you know, if God executed judgment immediately,
if the sin brought by what any sin deserves, which in the Bible is death, it would uproot
all of mankind.
Jesus said it would destroy all.
He says you got to leave time.
And God will sort this all out at the judgment.
And you might ask, why does he do that?
He does it because of mercy.
He has mercy.
He gives us his lifespan.
He gives us his time from life to death, right?
Or if the end of the age happens to come during your lifetime.
He gives us his lifetime to make a decision.
He allows each one of us to decide whether we will follow him or whether we will choose
not to follow him, whether our father will be the heavenly father or it will not be the
heavenly father, right?
The word of God says it's Satan, right?
He says he'll give us time to decide if we're going to embrace Christ as Savior in our life
or if we're just going to walk in our own way.
And he doesn't engage in instantaneous judgment because he's merciful.
And we should be so very grateful for God's mercy that he waits because all of us were
weeds.
Every one of us were lost and without Christ.
If he gave exact judgment, if sin, right?
Sin equals death.
That's what the word of God says.
It's the wages of sin or death.
If he exacted in that moment the wages of sin, all of us would be weeds that would be
ripped out of the ground and burned and destroyed.
He's given an analogy here.
We're not really weeds and wheat, right?
We're people.
Christ came so that the weeds could become wheat so that you have the opportunity to
grow and to rise up in Christ and so that one day we are saved.
That's what God's saving us from.
Judgment.
He's saving us from the end of time and the time it's a heaven or hell thing.
He really is.
And God waits.
He gives us a lifetime to do it and he extends that to everybody.
So the next time you think or say, just like I did, why doesn't God just zap him?
Why doesn't he just take him out?
Why doesn't he just get rid of him?
Understand it's God's mercy.
It's his mercy to all of mankind.
And even if he had a line, where would the line be?
Can you imagine that?
You'd be going through life and you're like, where's the line at?
If I had six evil thoughts in a row, does God zap me?
Wait for the lightning to hit you.
You're done.
You're toast.
Come on.
It's true.
You know, is it six evil days?
Is it six evil thoughts?
Right?
Is it, I rejected God just one more time in my heart and my head.
And just a little something extra to throw here is I close this message out.
Just so you have hope for real.
Do you know who should be engaged in stopping evil on the earth?
The mustard seeds that have the greatness of God inside of them.
That's what we're called to do.
Amen.
I'm gonna ask for everybody to stand.
Thank you for tuning in to this message from Life House Church.
We pray that you were impacted powerfully by this message.
If you have been personally affected by our ministry and you would like to partner with
us as we love God, love people every day, visit our website at www.lifehousechurch.org.
And we'll see you next time.
Amen.
amen.
Amen.