The Mustard Seed

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The parable of the mustard seed is taught in Sunday Schools everywhere. At first glance, it has a simple meaning, but if you look closer, you can find 3 very interesting lessons from this parable.

1. The first lesson that I was taught – said that you only had to have a tiny bit of faith and you could move a mountain with it.
2. As years went by, that changed somewhat into – if you have faith as tiny as a mustard seed, it will grow into a faith that can move a mountain.
3. More recently, many Bible scholars have said that the mustard plant of Jesus’ day was considered to be a weed that could multiply without being sown, and could become a threat to other crops wherever it sprung up. The hardy mustard seed would continue to come up for up to 60 years.

Lately, mostly online, I have seen people upset about the “weed” thing.

They don’t see that the good news about the mustard seed is that it cannot be destroyed!

You can pull it out of the ground or mow it down, but the seed remains and another mustard plant will grow in the spring.

That’s GOOD NEWS!

The kingdom of God will not be defeated. You can silence the Christians with laws, you can persecute them, you can even kill them, but they will keep springing up all over the place.

So which meaning did Jesus want us to understand?

Well, since Jesus was also God, and since he actually created ALL varieties of the mustard plant and knew everything there was to know about it, and since he also understood that many different cultures over many centuries would hear this story…

I believe he meant it to be understood and interpreted in every way possible.

The important thing to remember is that even when something appears at first glance to have a negative connotation, it can actually have a good interpretation too.

What’s good about weeds?

They keep on keeping on!

The Parable of the Mustard Seed is a parable that according to the Gospels of Luke (Luke 13:18-19), Mark (Mark 4:30-32), Matthew (Matthew 13:31-32), and the non-canonical Thomas (Thomas 20) was told by Jesus. Possible Hebrew Bible parallels are Daniel 4:10-12, 4:20-22 and Ezekiel 17:22-23, 31:1-9.