Good morning, the first reading today is from Mark 4 verses 30 to 32. Again he said, What shall we say the kingdom of God is like? Or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all the seeds on earth.
Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants. With such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade. And now to the Book of Revelation, chapter 21 verses 1 to 5. When I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.
And there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy Sishi, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Look, God's dwelling place is now among the people, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God.
He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the older order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, I am making everything new. Then He said, Write this down for these words are trustworthy and true.
And I find all reading Colossians chapter 1 verses 9 to 14. For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please Him in every way, bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of His holy people in the kingdom of light. For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Thank you so much for that reading. It's a great joy for me to be here with you today.
If I haven't met you before, my name is Tom. I do generally preach at 1030 quite a bit, but I've done a couple of series at the Garrison where we've been preaching through something else, and that's why I've been absent from the front for a little while. So it's a great joy to be with you all as we consider Advent as we look forward to Christmas together. What if the greatest things started with the smallest of seeds?
I think this is a question that's a helpful one for us in a world where we're surrounded by the great and the powerful, where our understanding of strength is often defined by size, by militaries, by financial markets. In the midst of all this, I think it is really easy for people to think that the kingdom of God is small, insignificant even. Well, as we commence our Advent series, looking towards our theme for Christmas, we're going to be quoting from Paul Kelly from Little Things. As we journey through Advent, considering the kingdom of God, we are going to do so through the lens of a seed.
By considering how Jesus explains the realities of his kingdom, today we are going to be starting at the end, fully grown. We are starting Advent with our hope. Please bow your heads and pray with me. Father God, we thank you for your word, we thank you for all that it has to teach us, and we pray now as we consider it that you would show us the kingdom, that we would look ahead and hold on tightly with hope.
Father, by your spirit, change us. Change us and give us endurance in Jesus name. I pray. Amen.
Well, I think we all quite enjoy a rags to riches story. The story of when something starts small and grows big. The classic one for this is the story of Apple starting in Steve Jobs' garage or the story of Harley Davidson who did a very similar thing. They were building bikes in their shed in the back in a garage.
I find it quite interesting now that other people's rags is something that I would, I would be stoked if I could get a garage now. But there we go. Times have changed a bit. But today we see and we're thinking about this type of story.
A story we should all love, yet somehow we look at the world and it can seem unimpressive to us. In Mark 4 we find Jesus surrounded by a crowd desperate to hear more about the kingdom of God. Jesus moves from the parable of the seeds that happens just before this to zone in on a particular type of seed. What shall we compare the kingdom of God to?
And of all the seeds he could choose, he goes for the smallest that they know of, a mustard seed. As small as a grain of sand planted in the dirt, the smallest shoot comes from the earth, but slowly and surely it swells into one of the grandest of all God's plants. A place for sanctuary for the birds of the air, a resting place in what was a scorched land. Now you'd be forgiven for thinking that the kingdom of God at times can look unimpressive to the outsider, because that is exactly how it is described by Jesus.
Its origins are humble, small, like a mustard seed. When faced with a Roman Empire ruling over them, ruling over them, Jesus' ministry would not have seemed impressive to people at the time. They were looking for a strong man, a conqueror to overthrow the Romans. They're looking for the son of man from Daniel 7 and instead they have a wandering teacher.
This was a tension constantly at play amongst the disciples and you see it throughout the Gospel of Mark. But Jesus seeks to correct them by explaining that the kingdom is not starting with a bang, but with a small movement. It is not going by the grace of God and it does grow as we saw in our series through the Book of Acts. The growth is organic through the power of his spirit and his people.
It defies the power structures of the time because it does not grow through the sword, but through the love of God. And this is so important for us as we live out our lives in a world that so often looks stronger to the eye. The world can look hopeless to us as war, famine, economic struggles continue to persist. We're having to constantly remind ourselves that this is not the end, that the kingdom is growing, that it hasn't failed, to know that this is not true to say that.
In Jesus the seed has been planted, it is growing and will continue to grow until it covers the whole earth and all God's people find their refuge in it. As we begin our time of Advent, we look towards a seemingly small event, the birth of a baby. And we see the kingdom begin to grow and that our time has grown into a church of his people, which is worth recognizing, has over a billion followers today. But it will continue to grow into the magnificence tree, but it is a process.
And sometimes that process feels hard, doesn't it? We need to be able to look to the hope that we have in the coming kingdom to find more strength and so to consider this more, we turn to some of the final pages of God's word in Revelation 21. Revelation 21 gives us an incredible view behind the curtain into the new creation. John exiled on the island of Patmoss receives a vision of the future that is to come as the new heaven and new earth come together as the new Jerusalem descends.
Chaos is gone, it is replaced by harmony, God comes forth to dwell amongst his people again, his presence, erases every trace of suffering, he himself will wipe every tear and declare an end to death, mourning, crying and pain, instead making all things new. And here in Revelation 1 we see the kingdom in its fullness, where eternal joy takes hold and this is what awaits the people of God, the people of the kingdom. Brothers and sisters, while the manger seems humble and small, the kingdom in its fullness is all-encompassing. That the time when God will descend and be with his people again, when the reversal of the curse of Eden is brought about, when all pain and all suffering is dismissed and the age of eternal life in perfect relationship with our Creator begins, when bushfire no longer ravages our country, when families are no longer torn apart, when sickness no longer destroys lives, the coming kingdom is a transformed creation where all the pain and sin of this life is gone, where God's people can be fully at rest, where there is no more tiredness, where there is no more busyness.
We are a people with a forward vision. We see the growth of the kingdom happening now in full expectation and hope that this in Revelation 21 is where we are going. We endure the sufferings of today because we know that we are the inheritors of the promise of this kingdom, that this is what begins at the birth of Jesus, sees its growth through the ministry of his people by the Spirit as he takes his place in heaven and will find its fullness in his return. We are on a journey with our God towards this day.
This is what we are invited into. Should we hold on to him? This is what we look to for our hope. This is why we run the race, not because we just hear of the mustard seed, but through this revelation to John, we get to see now what the tree is going to look like, that the kingdom of God is worth holding out for, it is worth making sacrifices for, it is worth telling everyone we possibly can about it, that through the blood of Christ, by the resurrection, by his love that compels us on, we walk a step forward each day, that the kingdom grows each day towards the moment when there will be no more death or crying or pain, when the weakness of our bodies is transformed and we shine like stars in the sky as we awake to everlasting life in the kingdom of God.
So what do we do in the meantime? Because it feels far away at times, doesn't it? How do we think about this time now? How do we think about what we do now?
And for this, I want us to end in Colossians 1. And so I'm going to read it again, which is great, but you still have it open because we all, great for instructions, sorry. But it's time. For this reason, since the day that we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you.
We continually ask God to feel you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please Him in every way, bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of His holy people in the kingdom of light, for He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness, and has brought us into the kingdom of the Son, He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Before I was working in church land, I spent some time in the Australian army, and one of my favorite activities that we do during PT was the rope climb. So we kind of climb about five minutes long rope, it's about that thick, and it was on one occasion when I got to the top of the rope, and because of the technique that you use with wrapping your legs around and pulling it up as you go and pushing down, when I got to the top of the rope, I grabbed the pillar on the roof, and as I brought my legs up, I unhooked the rope. Now the rope is quite heavy, and so I knew I wasn't going to be able to hang on for very long, so I let go of the rope and it fell, and a friend of mine ran off to grab a ladder.
I think that sometimes that is how the Christian life feels, that we are holding on to the roof, waiting for the help to come. Now that ladder actually came pretty quickly, but at the time, it didn't feel like it was going very quickly at all. But in the end, the ladder did come. The Colossian church was struggling just like we do.
The kingdom seemed small. They were tempted to add to it all the time with extra spirituality and secret knowledge. They were tempted by the world. They were challenged by it.
They were struggling to hold on to the truth because it was hard for them to remember the hope they have in a world like the one that we live in. Paul prays that they will remember their inheritance, remember what it is to share in their faith, to anchor themselves in the kingdom, to resist the temptation to turn to other things and to add reassurance and instead find all that they need in the truth of the gospel. And how does he think this is done? Well, in his prayer, I think he gives us some advice.
First, to seek to be filled with God with the spirit of his will by his knowledge. To seek out your God first and foremost, to grow in wisdom, I'd like to hope that we're doing that right now, as we dig into God's word together. Second, out of this, we seek to live lives worthy of the gospel, that we try to live in obedience to him knowing that this will lead us to seek him more. It will lead to kingdom growth in us as we are transformed, bearing fruit and growing in the knowledge of God and that this leads to endurance and patience as we wait for the kingdom to come in the midst of a world that challenges us.
And finally, he says to come before the Father in praise, once again reminding ourselves of the reality of the time that we live in as followers of Jesus, we may see the kingdom of darkness around us, but we do not dwell within it. We are citizens of the kingdom of light. We have been brought out of the dominion of darkness. We have been rescued from it and brought into the kingdom of the Son he loves and by him we have redemption.
And so in the meantime, while we're waiting for the ladder to come, we must seek wisdom. Paul's prayer begins where ours must, not with strategies, but with quiet prayer, knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the spirit gives. Seeking wisdom isn't chasing esoteric secrets like the Colossians' temptations, it is delving into God's word, it is listening to the spirit and turning to God in prayer. This is the first step we must all take to live out our faith as we look to the future, with my first coming to God in prayer so that we bear fruit.
From wisdom comes action. Live a life worthy of the Lord bearing fruit in every good word. Paul's vision isn't vague virtue, it's the kingdom expanding through us. Transformed lives deeds that please him growing knowledge into endurance.
Like the mustard seeds branches reaching out, we bear fruit not by force, but by obedience. Response to the commands of your God with intentional action and see how your faith and the kingdom grows through that. Take up a new serving role. Reach out to those around you who don't know Jesus, use your funds to support the kingdom growth because then after obedience he calls us back to praise.
Praise isn't an afterthought. It is the soil's response to rain. Joyful, unforced, rescuing us from darkness. We don't dwell in the shadows.
Colossians reminds us that we have been transferred to the sun's realm, that we are redeemed and we are forgiven. And praise reorientates us in a world that looks dark and instead reminds us that the seed is growing and turns our faces back towards the kingdom to come that we see in Revelation 21. Take a moment each day to reflect on how you see God working in your life. Take your prayers focused on your future hope and ask for help to keep going.
Living this way means that we keep our eyes fixed on the truth that the kingdom is our reality now and Revelation 21 is our future. In the meantime, we hold to the path to the way by seeking God, by growing in our knowledge and wisdom, by living his way and by praising him all the time being reminded of the reality that we live in. The seed is planted and it is growing, but today we look to the hope of when it comes in its fullness, holding fast to our God as we take a step towards it each day. Let us pray.
Vahdah, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the way that we can be challenged to live for you today as we look to the kingdom of tomorrow. Vahdah, make it our reality. Help us to look towards your kingdom each day in renewed confidence as we take steps towards that kingdom together with you.
In Jesus name I pray. Amen.