Yeast for a Feast and Seed for a Weed
The Best Ever Sermon on the Kingdom of Heaven. The whole story arc in some of the shortest parables.
This is one of the best sermons on the Kingdom of Heaven I’ve ever heard. Pastor Rod Van Solkema teaches from Matt 13 on the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven and draws out the whole biblical story arc from Genesis to Revelation contained in these two small pictures. Highly recommend a full listen, but I’ve taken notes and summarized below using mostly quotes from the sermon. Thank you to pastor Rod and the team at Crossroads Bible Church in Grand Rapids, MI. Something special there happening on Scribner Ave., keep it up!
The Parable of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven
Imagine the crowd gathered around Jesus in Matthew 13. Jesus is teaching hundreds, maybe thousands of people, many tired and poor but curious about this rabbi. And he teaches with everyday things, the mustard seed and yeast, as profound illustrations of the Kingdom of Heaven. He doesn't give us a definition of the Kingdom, instead, he tells stories. You can't summarize something so rich, so beautiful, so mysterious in a few words, a definition is too small.
Jesus uses parables rather than definitions to describe the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom is too vast and significant to be captured by a single sentence. Like abstract truths—such as sin—the depth is better grasped through vivid metaphors and stories. C.S. Lewis's imaginative example of Turkish delight from The Chronicles of Narnia and Tolkein’s ring in The Lord of the Rings deepen our understanding of spiritual realities.
And that’s what Jesus gives us. He talks about a mustard seed and yeast. Simple images. But packed with truth.
Jesus is telling us in these images that the Kingdom of Heaven isn’t some distant place we go when we die. It's here. It’s now. And it’s earthy. It’s rooted in the soil, in the flour, in the everyday stuff of life. That’s why we’re called not just to pray for his Kingdom to come, but to live it, to welcome it, and to be part of its expansion.
Yeast and Bread: The first illustration is about a woman who uses 3 measures of flour (some translations calculate it to 60 lbs.). That detail isn’t random, it’s a direct reference to Genesis 18. Abraham and Sarah prepare a meal for three mysterious visitors—one of them the pre-incarnate Christ, God Himself - and Sarah makes bread with 3 measures of flour. The slaughter of a choice animal and baking of so much bread is an act of extravagant, urgent, generous hospitality. The kingdom, and God’s very character, is illustrated in Abraham running to the outsider and saying, “come in,” in the abundance, welcome and grace. We see this again in Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son. The father shuns cultural norms of shame and runs to the estranged. The Kingdom is always about embracing the one who’s lost, the one who’s wandering, the one who’s unworthy.
The yeast itself is also a poignant illustration. You can’t even see yeast when it’s mixed into the dough, but leave it to its work, and soon the whole batch is transformed. The Kingdom works like that—quiet, hidden, but powerful. It's not flashy or loud like the kingdoms of this world. It’s subversive. It's underground. But it’s everywhere, unstoppable, transforming and working.
The Mustard Seed: The second image is a small seed that becomes a tree… really an invasive weed that spreads everywhere. Most farmers want to get rid of it because it grows insidiously and can take over. The mustard seed is tiny, almost invisible, but it grows into a tree. And not just any tree—it becomes a place where birds can perch, where others can find shade. That's the Kingdom. It starts small, almost hidden, but it grows persistently in a way that changes everything around it.
This also echoes Old Testament images—trees represent nations, divine provision, and the connection between heaven and earth. The tree shows up first in Eden, the Tree of Life. When we lost that tree, we lost our place of peace and wholeness – of Shalom. But now, Jesus is saying, that tree is growing again. The Kingdom is the return of Eden. The Tree of Life is being replanted in the soil of this world and it will grow and is unstoppable.
We often think salvation is about going to heaven. But the Bible ends with heaven coming down to us. It ends with the Tree of Life in the great city whose leaves are for healing the nations. Heaven is not escape; it’s restoration. God’s dream isn’t just to fix us—it’s to renew and restore perfect shalom, everything as it should be.
So what does this mean for us? Three key observations/applications:
Every kingdom has a king. And our King is Jesus. He doesn't want our negotiation; He wants our surrender, our loyalty. He’s not something we fit into our lives—He is our life and the one to whom we owe allegiance. He has an agenda and wants us to join him. Our proper response is prostration, obedience, fealty.
If what God is doing is renewing all things, planting his kingdom here on earth by reaching to the margins and seeking after the lost then the church can’t just be a place where we retreat. We are also called the city on a hill, the lamp on a stand shining light all around. We’ve got to be the people who bring the feast to others. Who bake the bread, who plant the seed, who run to the outsider.
The moment we try to keep control, to climb higher, to prove ourselves, we miss it. God loves the small. The Kingdom is found by going low. That’s how God has always worked. He didn’t work in the halls of power, through the big players and flashy people. He chose barren women, shepherd boys, overlooked people. And then, He became the smallest of all—a single cell (a seed) in Mary’s womb, a baby in a feeding trough, a man hanging on a cross.
That cross is called a tree in the Bible (Heb: Etz Gk: xylon) – the word play is not just poetic—it’s intentional. Jesus, the smallest seed, became the Tree of Life. The language usage echoes the tree in the garden of Eden, and the tree in the new heaven and new earth using the same word for cross or pole. Jesus is the Tree of Life, restoring access to God's presence, bringing heaven to earth… the tree that heals the nations!
So what do we do? We go low. We humble ourselves. We stop trying to prove something and seeking after power and status. We look for Jesus in the low places. That’s where the Kingdom grows. Whether in prosperity or humiliation, the answer is the same: go low. It may not look impressive. It may not get headlines. But the kingdom working in these low places changes the world.
That’s the invitation of Matthew 13. Not to define the kingdom or draw the boundaries of the Kingdom, or to build the kingdom, but to join it. To live in it and give our allegiance to Jesus—our King— and let him work as we run towards those who need to hear the good news and invite them to join the feast and find shade in the great tree.
From those earthy, low places, the Kingdom will grow—quietly, steadily, and gloriously—until it fills the whole world.