Luke 13:18 Commentary and Bible Study

We now come to two very short parables of the kingdom, but they are not, for the most part, descriptions of the kingdom. They mostly deal with the way in which we get into the kingdom. They are about admission to the kingdom. They teach us how we find this great blessing, how it comes to us, and the difference it makes to us. The Lord Jesus Christ has just warned the Jews that they all need to repent, for they all just as guilty as the eighteen slaughtered by Pilate. In this context he is saying, ‘Don't count on going to heaven. Don't run away with the idea that you will be accepted by God. Unless you seek him and find him in a deep and personal way, you are not going to heaven.’ So we would expect that these parables which follow, to tell us how to get into the kingdom. (In Matthew there is a further application of this parable to the church.)Here is this wonderful parable. Entry into the kingdom of heaven, it teaches, is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it.’ In Matthew's Gospel there is a little more said, and the Lord Jesus Christ describes the mustard seed. Though it begins as the smallest seed in circulation, it becomes a full-sized tree in the garden if left to grow. A man takes this small seed and he plants it in his garden by simply casting it onto the ground. The point about this parable was that this seed was very easy to sow. It was very small, and all you did was cast it into the garden. It didn't require any great skill; it looked after itself. and it came up and it grew remarkably. What does this garden represent? It is the garden of a man's soul or the garden of life. All of us can view life as a kind of garden, the garden or the small holding of your soul. You walk along the street and you look into the gardens as you pass the houses, and if you are interested you can admire them or not; you can cast a critical or approving eye over your neighbour's garden – how they have looked after it, how they have cultivated it, what kinds of plants they grow and so on. Wouldn't it be terrible if we could do that to one another's souls? but that is the illustration here. If one could just look over the garden wall as it were into your life, look into your conscience, look into your mind, read your thoughts; if one could know how you think, what your real likes and dislikes are, the history of your life, and see how it is going to stretch in front of you, what you are going to achieve or not achieve and what your failures and your embarrassments are going to be – what a terrible it would be! It's a good thing our minds are a secret place, and we cannot look deeply into each other like that. But this is the garden of your soul, your mind, your heart, your life's experience.Why not look at it yourself? Your neighbours can't see it; your friends can't see it, but it's about time we looked at it ourselves. What is the garden of your life like? What's growing in it? Not so very long ago I passed a row of houses that were newly built and newly occupied and they had quite small front gardens and the builders or people who prepared these houses had left them pretty neat and tidy. They had little things growing there: few little shrubs, hedges, neat clips, just beginning. After about a year I happened to drive that way again and it was awful to see it. This just happened to be a parade of people who obviously were not interested in keeping the front gardens. Those hedges were up and straggly, the whole thing looked a mess. What is your life like? What is your heart like? Is it a mess with dry patches where you get no satisfaction even from your own thoughts? Have you got only weeds growing in it? Is it full of pests, temptations and lusts and things of this kind? Or if you could look ahead into the future, what do you plan? Have you got any plans for the eternal future, or are all your plans about possessions and career and pleasures? There's no structure in that garden of your life. You don't aim to have any character, you don't aim to do any good, you don't aim to be a person of stature and depth and understanding. You don't aim to be a person who walks with God, who is preparing for the eternal future, someone who can be a stay and a support to others, You are not planning the garden of your soul at all. The trouble is, we just lurch into life when it comes to the soul and the character, just dealing with the things around us, just having what we want to have right now. The only things we tend to plan long term for, are things for our very personal and selfish benefit. The fact is that, even if we do plan ahead, we cannot accomplish anything, because we are sinful and selfish and all our plans will just be for number one. They won't be for character, for spiritual growth, for knowledge of God, for pleasing him. Here in the parable is a man and he takes this tiny mustard seed – someone has recommended it to him – and he casts it in the garden, and he says, ‘Well, I'm no gardener. I haven't got skill to cultivate this. I hope it comes up.’ Yes, but this particular kind of seed is tough and it's powerful and it's full of life and it doesn't have to be fussed over. It doesn't have to be worried about. You cast it into the garden and it has the power to flourish and germinate and put up its shoot. What's more, it's not just a little thing, it's a big thing, and it will grow and grow, and it will be fragrant, and it will bear fruit and all the birds of the air will come and lodge in its branches. It is a beautiful picture.