Mark 4:30-34--The Parable of the Mustard Seed

Mark 4:30-34
English Standard Version

The Parable of the Mustard Seed
30 And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? 31 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

​33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. 34 He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.

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Jesus is still telling His disciples "kingdom parables" so that they can better understand the kingdom of God in the hearts of men, and the kingdom of God that will be experienced in the New Heavens and the New Earth that are to come.  This parable sounds a lot like a dream given to King Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4, only this time the kingdom represented by the giant tree is the kingdom of God, not the kingdom of Babylon.  This giant tree in Jesus' parable started off as the smallest of the seeds.  I'll finish going through the parable and then give a "defense" of this passage as this is one of the passages in the Bible that people argue about sometimes on the internet for reasons you might not expect.

Jesus then says that the mustard seed when it has grown becomes larger than all other "garden plants" (that's important to our later discussion) and this herb that started off as just a small seed essentially grows into a "tree" with large branches so that the birds of the air can make their nests in it (this is specifically the part that reminds me of Daniel 4).

The people clearly understood what Jesus was saying that the seed looks nothing like the end result, that something small and seemingly insignificant can turn into something so large that it would be fair to assume Jesus was talking about it growing to a kingdom that would fill the entire earth like the rock that destroyed the kingdoms of this world in Daniel 3 and then grew to a mountain that filled the whole earth.

Now to some of the arguments that people make.  There are attacks against the authority of Scripture and the Deity of Christ from Evolutionists (I use a big E as it's basically a religion at this point) and liberal theologians that don't believe in the inspiration of Scripture.  Their arguments are different, but both attempt to reach the same conclusion--that Jesus was in error when they try to say that He is making a scientific claim here about botany that they believe they can disprove with science from today.  Let's start with some facts that are important to us.  Jesus is telling a story to an agrarian people in a specific region of the world at a specific time in history.  The context of the parable is about seeds planted in the ground by farmers that are grown for food (specifically the context of the parable talks about "garden plants" that refer to herbs and other plants that would have been grown in a garden and not a field).  At this time and in this place to this people, the black mustard seed that Jesus is referring to was the smallest seed they would plant in their gardens.  It also is true that it would grow to an extremely large plant that had branches like a tree that birds could nest in.  There's really no "there" there, but let me at least give some space to the arguments the critics make.

First, they say that because we know of smaller seeds today in varieties of orchids that are about 1/20th the size of a mustard seed that Jesus either wasn't omniscient or that He knowingly made a false statement about the mustard seed being the smallest of all seeds.  Alternatively, the argument could be made that Jesus said things perfectly right but that those who remembered the story and wrote it down remembered it imperfectly and that they are just the recollections of humans and that there is no divine inspiration that allows us to trust the words that were used.  All of these arguments are designed to undermine the authority of the Bible in areas of morality because they then make the argument that if we can't know or trust the words of the Bible in this passage, how can we know or trust its words in any passage and we then get into people elevating themselves over Scripture to decide which passages they want to believe in instead of submitting to the authority of Scripture.

I've already made the argument above that this is a parable meaning that some hyperbole is allowed as the listeners know that the purpose of the story is to teach a spiritual truth, not a scientific one.  Also, if we looked at every other time that Jesus talks about a mustard seed, it's always in a figurative sense of something small that has great consequences (the gospel or faith).  This is not to say that Jesus was so restrained in His knowledge that He could or would accidently or intentionally mislead people--the Father and the Spirit directed His steps and His words so that Jesus says that He only speaks the words that the Father gives Him (see John 12:49).  I know the context there is about Jesus telling them how they must be saved, but we see a pattern in Jesus' ministry of Him praying to the Father and listening to Him to receive direction on where to go and what to say.  We also know Jesus was led (sometimes even "driven" by the Spirit).  So, this should put to rest any question about if imperfect knowledge was involved because even if the Son had imperfect knowledge during His 33 years He lived here on earth, the Father and the Spirit still had perfect knowledge and would not tell Jesus to speak something that was a lie.  "God is light and in Him there is no darkness."

There are some scientific arguments that can be made about speciation and if the orchids in question even existed at the time of Jesus, but I believe the better argument is that orchids were not the types of plants that these people that Jesus was talking to would have planted in their gardens in that place at that time.  That is the context of the parable.  If we allow people to lift a verse out of context of surrounding verses, time, space, and original language, then they can easily make arguments that would seem to indicate that the words of the Bible could be inaccurate either because God didn't speak the words or the people that recorded the words were imperfect, or there have been translation errors--take your pick, all of the arguments are means to an end of men being able to try to either throw out the entire Bible or pick and choose the parks they like and don't find offensive.  We don't get to make an EXACTO-knife version of the Bible where we cut out the parts that we don't like.  Be carefully of attacks from both those who claim to be Christians and those who claim not to be Christians where they both are trying to argue for a low view of Scripture that does not treat it is inerrant or authoritative.