SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/11/2022 10:46 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Parable of the Mustard Seed”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matt. 13:31-32
Message of the verses: “31 He presented
another parable to them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard
seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; 32 and this is smaller than all other
seeds; but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants, and becomes a tree, so that
THE BIRDS OF THE AIR come and NEST IN ITS BRANCHES.’”
Jesus continues to use the figure of planting in
this parable and compares the kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed and its
growth into a full-grown plant.
Here
are some interesting facts about mustard from the pen of John MacArthur: “Mustard has long been a widely used herb
throughout much of the world, and in modern times it has found additional
commercial value in the manufacture of film.
Amazingly, years ago it was discovered that cows who feed was
supplemented with mustard seed developed bones that had superior quality for
use in making silver compounds used in photographic film.” Not really sure how much this info will help
anyone out as this was probably written in the 1980’s.
Now
while I was listening to MacArthur’s sermon on this parable he went into some
things about how this parable has been attacked by liberals as they site
different things about how the seed of the mustard plant was not really what
Jesus claimed it to be as far as its size.
Jesus was not comparing this seed to all others in existence but only to
the seeds of garden plants as seen in the highlighted part of the verses
above. And then this seed was also
spoken of as the smallest in Palestine.
MacArthur writes “Many seeds, such as those of the wild orchid, are much
smaller than the seed of the mustard plant.
But of the many plants grown at the time in the gardens and fields of
Palestine, the mustard plant has the smallest seeds, just as Jesus said.
“When
sperma (seed) is used in the New
Testament in reference to plants, it is always used of agricultural plants,
those intentionally grown for food. And
of those plants, the mustard had seeds that are smaller than all other seeds.
He
goes on to site Dr. OL. H. Shinners who is the director of the herbarium and
Southern Methodist University in Dallas and lecturer at the Smithsonian
Institute, stated in a conversation that
“the mustard seed would
indeed have been the smallest of those likely to have been noticed by the
people at the time of Christ. The
principal field crops (such as barley, wheat, lentils, beans) have much larger
seeds, as do…other plants which might have been present as weeds…There are
various other weeds and wild flowers belonging to the mustard, amaranth, pigweed,
and chickweed families with seeds as small or smaller than mustard itself but
they would not have been particularly known or noticed by the inhabitants. The only modern crop plant of importance with
smaller seeds than mustard is tobacco, but this plant is on American origin and
was not grown in the Old World until the 16th century and later.
(John A. Sproule, ‘The Problem of the Mustard Seed,’ Grace Theology Journal 1 [spring 1980]:40).”
Okay
now that we got this out of the way, Lord willing we will begin to look at the
parable in our next SD, and perhaps a bit longer than just tomorrow as this is
a long section.
4/11/2022 11:13 AM
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