The Mustard Seed

Matthew 13:31-33 (ESV)
He put another parable before them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. [32] It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."
[33] He told them another parable. "The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened."
It is the smallest of all seeds. This can’t help but be an object lesson in the interpretation of scripture, or hermeneutics. It is an object lesson in to what inerrancy does and does not mean. Jesus incorporates a figure of speech and uses hyperbole to emphasize a point, the smallest of seeds.
I once heard a Baptist pastor who evidently didn’t visit grocery stores much, or eat the good mustard that comes in those Christmas gift packs full of summer sausage and crackers and cheese. As he began to hypothesize on how small a mustard seed must be, and compared it to tobacco seed. Thinking the mustard seed must be really, really small. Mustard seeds are actually quite large as far as seeds go.
But he is making a point that in comparison to what the seed grows into it is quite small. So it is with the gospel and the kingdom of God. It starts out small. You sow just a little word, and yet it keeps growing. The more you water it and feed it the more it grows, until finally it takes over your whole life when you weren’t even noticing the growth!
Jesus and his hearers knew that the mustard seed wasn’t the smallest of seeds. It was never meant to be taken literally. But the point that the kingdom grows, that faith takes over, and that it starts out small. Well that is true.